


pocketful of posies

by redamantian



Series: dead hearts club [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Murder Mystery, and subsequently more answers, but with more questions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:28:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 43,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21652282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redamantian/pseuds/redamantian
Summary: Christophe Gaspard is, of course, dead. Everybody knows this. He died four years ago, executed by the Church of Seiros for his involvement in the Tragedy of Duscur. But Christophe doesn’t remember being involved in the Tragedy of Duscur; Christophe doesn’t remember much of anything at all.Christophe Gaspard has a little brother, and Christophe’s little brother loved him when he was alive and loves him now that he’s not. Christophe’s little brother is special. Christophe’s little brother has learned to pay attention to all of the things other people miss—Christophe’s little brother believes that the church is telling a lie.Or: Ashe sees dead people.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert & Dedue Molinaro, Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert & Everyone, Christophe Gaspard & Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert
Series: dead hearts club [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1567951
Comments: 258
Kudos: 460





	1. book one: something left undone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The ghosts swarm.  
>  They speak as one  
> person. Each  
> loves you. Each  
> has left something  
> undone._
> 
> _— Rae Armantrout, “Unbidden”_

Ashe is starting to wonder if they’re ever going to reach Garreg Mach.

They’ve been on the road for a while, now, him and a handful of Lonato’s finest men. They cut a slow, ambling pace through the woods, mindful of the path underfoot. Magdred Way is treacherous this time of year, and it really is better that they move slowly—not that Ashe is convinced they’re moving at all.

Since yesterday, the scenery hasn’t changed; it’s all the same unyielding forest, gnarled and overgrown, fog so thick it seems to cling to his skin with every step. It sits damp and heavy in the air, muffling all sounds and sights of the living world. Maybe they’re just going in circles? Goddess, he hopes not. It was nice of the knights to offer to escort him to the monastery, he wouldn’t want them to get stuck in the middle of nowhere for his sake—

“Stop that,” says a cheerful, familiar voice.

To his credit, Ashe doesn’t startle. He does take a moment to make sure that the rest of his companions are safely out of earshot before he asks under his breath, lips parted in a bare smile, “Stop what?”

“I can hear you overthinking from here, little man,” the voice snickers. “You’ve got to stop. It’s just a little extra walking. It’ll be fine.”

Ashe catches the flash of a faint grin out of the corner of his eye, a lazy slash of white against the shifting mist. When he blinks, it’s gone again.

“That’s easy for you to say,” he protests. “You don’t even have to walk!”

There’s a soft laugh and a softer breeze, just cold enough to make him shiver. It’s a bit hard to see through the fog—there, the silhouette of a man floating next to him, tall and translucent and decked in the colors of House Gaspard. Even faded, the eyes that look down at him still sparkle, slate-blue like the quiet sky above.

“Even if I did,I’d say the same thing,” Christophe tells him. “I don’t have to remind you, do I? Father’s knights _love_ you, Ashe. You’re going away for a year, and they’re here to make sure you get there in one piece. They really don’t mind.”

Ashe shrugs a little. “But I feel _bad,”_ he offers, kicking a pebble off the path and watching it skitter into the grass.

Christophe shrugs back, harder. “But why? You shouldn’t.”

Ashe makes a face and pulls his shoulders up to his ears. “But I do!”

Christophe opens his mouth to deliver his next blistering comeback—but then he yelps, the shape of him flickering in the fog, and then the cook’s son is standing there instead, two outlines overlapping like a single image falling out of focus.

Samuel, fully unaware, wraps his traveling furs around him and shivers. Ashe winces in sympathy.

“Bit chilly today, isn’t it?” he says, shooting Ashe a rueful smile. “But we’re making good time. Should be arriving at Garreg Mach before midday.”

Christophe is, for want of a better word, sulking. “He just walked through me!”

 _That’s what you get for being dead,_ Ashe thinks, two seconds before he feels bad for being mean and three seconds before he remembers that this is Christophe _,_ so it’s fine.

“Thank you, Samuel,” he says instead, earnest as anything. He shifts the weight of the pack on his back and raises his voice just enough to carry to the rest of the knights ahead. “Really, thank you all for coming along! You didn’t have to do all this for me.”

“And send Lord Lonato’s son off to school without a proper escort?” One of the knights shakes her head, pale ponytail bobbing behind her. “Don’t be silly, Ashe. It’ll make him feel better to know that we saw you safely there. It gives _me_ peace of mind, at least.”

“What did I tell you?” says Christophe.

“I’m still grateful,” he insists. “I don’t think I would have wanted to make this trip on my own.”

Samuel laughs; it’s pleasant and loud, a bright belly-laugh that gets swallowed up by the mist. The soft dimples in his cheeks remind Ashe of the castle kitchens, the smell of fresh jam and baking bread, nights spent giggling and covered in flour in front of the hearth. “You’ve never been far from Gaspard territory, have you?” he says. It’s more of a statement than a question. “I wager it wouldn’t be very kind of us to send you on your way without any help.”

“Not that you wouldn’t have had help,” Christophe chimes in.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Ashe says, to everyone present and no one in particular.

Samuel claps him heartily on the back. “So, are you excited, Ashe?” he asks, gesturing in what is ostensibly the direction of the monastery. The fog hasn’t quite lifted, but the trunks of the trees around them are starting to grow more pronounced, and if Ashe squints, he can almost believe they’re starting to thin out a little. “I always knew you wanted to be a knight, but I have to say, I didn’t think you’d want to go to Garreg Mach. What with the twins staying home, and all.”

“We’d have been happy to train you back at Castle Gaspard,” one of the knights adds, faintly wistful. Ashe tucks away a smile at the words left unsaid.

“I’ll only be gone for the year,” he assures them. “Gaspard is my home, but it’s all I know. If I’m going to become a knight, I should learn a little more about the world first, shouldn’t I? Besides, Cole and Violet have all of you and Lonato to look after them—”

“And Socks,” Christophe cuts in. “That cat is worth a hundred knights, you know.”

“—I’m sure I’ll miss them terribly, but I’m not worried. So you shouldn’t worry too much about me, either,” he finishes firmly.

Samuel grins at him, toothy and true.

“You’ve become a fine young man, Ashe,” he says, unbearably nostalgic for someone who just turned eighteen last week. “Steady with a bow, good head on your shoulders… I think Christophe would be proud.”

“I think Christophe would be proud, too,” says Christophe.

Ashe turns his head just far enough to look unimpressed. This did not work when Christophe was alive, and it certainly isn't working now.

Out loud, he muses, “You really think so?”

“Of course!” Samuel exclaims.

“…oh, quit it,” Ashe says to both of them, but mostly to his brother, who is doubled over laughing in midair and taking full advantage of the fact that he no longer needs to waste time on things like _breathing._

Ahead, the fog is beginning to lift. As the sun crests the horizon, the mist burns away, unveiling every living thing hidden underneath. It’s a deceptively quick end to nearly three days of hard travel—every thirty paces or so, the trees thin out, until they’re left standing in a vast, grassy field at the foot of the Oghma Mountains, the sky above streaked in dusty peach and faded gold, burning and boundless.

Ashe, standing in the lingering shade of a tall pine tree, pauses, struck still by the sight. One of the knights turns around, smiles fondly when he notices the look on his face. “It’s really something, isn’t it?”

“It’s way up there, tucked away in the mountains,” Christophe murmurs. When Ashe squints, he can make out the distant shape of towers peeking over the hills. “Ah, Garreg Mach. Brings back memories.”

For an instant, Christophe’s shape stutters, blurs at the edges; the smell of blood comes down like a heavy curtain, sharp and bitter, the air around him warped into a shimmering, hazy static. Fear surges through Ashe’s body at the sight, ancient and visceral. He breathes in, lets it settle. Greets it like an old friend.

“Well, that’s the point,” he whispers back, and the static fades, leaving only one rattled ghost in its wake.

Christophe sucks in a deep, shuddering breath and squeezes Ashe’s shoulder. He doesn’t say anything else. His touch bears no weight, not anymore—still, the chill is deep and comforting, the only familiar thing in a world bright to bursting.

Christophe Gaspard is, of course, dead. Everybody knows this. He died four years ago, executed by the Church of Seiros for his involvement in the Tragedy of Duscur. But Christophe doesn’t remember being involved in the Tragedy of Duscur; Christophe doesn’t remember much of anything at all.

Christophe Gaspard has a little brother, and Christophe’s little brother loved him when he was alive and loves him now that he’s not. Christophe’s little brother is special. Christophe’s little brother has learned to pay attention to all of the things other people miss.

Christophe’s little brother believes that the Church is telling a lie, that his death has been made into something left undone, and Ashe has never been one to let these things go forgotten.

“We’ll figure it out,” Ashe says, pitched low and fervent in his throat. “We’ll make it right,” he says, louder, barely sparing a second before he takes off after the knights, heels skidding on the grassy slope down into the valley.

“I know, beansprout,” says Christophe, light and fond, warm as a beating heart. “I know.”

It takes longer than Ashe expects to cross the valley. By the time they reach the base of the mountains, the sun is already cast high overhead, leaving him sweating in his furs.

“This is where we take our leave, kiddo,” one of the knights says, patting the large, well-kept stone archway that gates the path leading up to the monastery. “You’ll be alright on your own?”

“I’ll be fine,” Ashe promises, standing up a little straighter and trying very hard to look like someone who will be alright on his own. Samuel considers this before pulling him into a bone-crushing hug.

“Don’t get into too much trouble without me,” he says, with a noise that sounds suspiciously like a sniffle.

“I’ll try!” Ashe squeezes back, breathing in sweat and smoke and suddenly feeling very, very homesick. “Listen, when you get back, tell your parents I said hello. And don’t let Vi bully you into giving her extra pastries—not even if she pretends to cry about it! Unless she doesn’t get over it in ten minutes, that’s how you know something’s wrong. Oh, and make sure Cole remembers to feed his sourdough, he’s been keeping it in that pantry you guys don’t use but he always forgets it’s there until he wants to bake—”

“Ashe.” Samuel cuts him off with a laugh and rubs at his eyes, color high in his cheeks. “It’s okay. We’ll take care of your siblings. You said it yourself—you don’t have to worry about a thing. Make Gaspard proud, you hear?”

Ashe squeezes his eyes shut for just a second, then resurfaces with a broad, heartfelt smile. “Travel safely, Sam. We’ll see each other again soon.”

He’s been standing by the archway for longer than strictly necessary, watching their backs shrink into the distance, when Christophe elbows him and says, “You miss them already, huh.”

“No,” says Ashe, automatic and without heat.

“Stop worrying,” Christophe tells him. “They’ll be alright.”

Ashe turns to face the path to the monastery, steps curling up and up and around the mountain, like the path of an enormous snake cut into the stone. “Let’s go.”

After days of fumbling along uneven ground in the fog, this climb isn’t so bad. The slope is gentle enough for even a child to manage the trek on foot. Ashe sheds his traveling furs in favor of the lighter hooded shirt underneath, and Christophe regales him with stories of his time at the academy.

Once in a while, other ghosts tailing other travelers approach him, asking for his help with little things. Finding a lost earring, directions to town. Some do not seem to realize that they are dead. Most look about the same as they must have when they were alive, normal townspeople going about their day, telltale desaturated colors shivering in the breeze.

Ashe is used to this. He stops to honor every request, as long as it seems like something he can take care of quickly. Many are content just to know that he’s listening, and fade off into the breeze with little more than a story and a sigh.

One or two, distressed at their newfound incorporeality, come to him screaming and crying, clutching at his sleeves with slick, bloody hands that leave no mark on his clothes—he does his level best not to flinch. A child sobs from blank white sockets with part of his skull caved in, crimson oozing sluggish from the wound. A woman coughs and the sound rattles horribly between her cries for help, bruises blooming like a garland of violets around her throat.

These, too, are familiar, no matter how much he wishes they weren’t. Death is vicious, sometimes. No matter how many he meets, there’s a flickering fear in him that never really seems to go away.

But Ashe treats them with patience. _They just need someone to listen,_ he reminds himself, taking deep, steadying breaths. _They’re only scary because they’re scared._ He holds their hands, ignores the deep-winter chill it buries in his bones, says kind and gentle things until they’ve calmed down enough that the gruesome evidence of their death fades away once more.

“I’m so sorry for troubling you,” the woman says, her neck pale and unmarred above the plain cut of her collar. Her eyes are wide and green, a couple shades darker than Ashe’s own. “I just… my husband… I was married off into a minor lord’s family, you know. Kind man. Good man. Thought I was the luckiest woman in the world! But after our third Crestless son, he… he…” Her outline flickers, and for a moment, her throat is necklaced in bruises once more, reddish-purple and shaped sickeningly like fingers.

“Shh,” he says. A deep and familiar sadness nestles itself at the base of his ribcage. “You’re safe now. He can’t hurt either of you anymore.”

Eventually, the trail flattens out, splitting into several diverging paths throughout the town at the base of the monastery; Ashe catalogues them out of habit, taking note of each useful shop and hidden back alley on the way to the gate. Between this and his acts of community service, it’s already late afternoon by the time he reaches the outer wall of Garreg Mach. There’s a small crowd of what looks to be students and their escorts gathered at the back of the marketplace.

“Greetings, new student! Welcome to Garreg Mach,” the gatekeeper says. “Are you here to check in?”

“I am!” Ashe fumbles for his papers.

Check-in goes smoothly, barring Christophe’s heckling (“Goddess, why’d you let Father sign you up as _Ubert?_ You could’ve taken your mom’s name like the twins, Ashe, _Duran_ sounds so much cooler—”), and soon enough Ashe finds himself standing in the doorway of an empty room with a key in one hand and an Officer’s Academy uniform bundled up in the other.

“Wait a minute,” says Christophe. He walks into the room ahead of Ashe, steps skimming over faded blue carpet, leaving the dust there undisturbed. “This room looks—familiar. Was this… mine?”

Ashe swallows down the feeling that rattles in his chest at the thought. The key grows heavy in his hand. “Do you think so?” he starts, but Christophe is presently occupied with sticking his head through the wall, so he closes his mouth and waits for him to be done.

“Never mind,” his brother says, chipper as ever, though Ashe knows him well enough to know that this is little more than a hasty cover for disappointment. Christophe pulls his head back into Ashe’s room and shrugs. “All the dorms look the same.”

Ashe sighs and flops onto the bed, not bothering to shut the door behind him. “You can’t just peek into other people’s rooms, Christophe,” he admonishes. “It’s not nice.”

Christophe takes a seat next to him, tucking his long legs away so that Ashe doesn’t accidentally reach through them. “Oh, relax, sprout. Your neighbor’s not even here yet.” He sticks a hand through Ashe’s rucksack, wiggling his fingers above his face. “Shouldn’t you get unpacking?”

There’s not much to unpack. Ashe travels light, and most of his belongings pull double duty between service and sentiment, like his favorite quill and the set of wooden spoons that Samuel gifted him for his sixteenth birthday. He sets the spoons on his side table and the quill on his desk. After a moment’s thought, he decides to set a stack of fresh paper there, too, so he won’t forget to write home once classes begin.

His new uniform turns out to be a little too big, so he shrugs the jacket on over his hoodie and calls it a day. The pants are a lost cause; he abandons them in favor of his leggings with a shrug. He’ll hem them later.

Ashe is setting a thick stack of books—his favorite installments in the Loog cycle—on the chair he’s pulled up next to his bed when he hears a rough, jeering voice, right outside his door:

“Say, you’re that dog from the palace in Fhirdiad, aren’t you?”

Christophe sighs at the way Ashe instantly goes alert, watching his open doorway with guarded curiosity. His poker face is good, but Christophe knows him better. “You gonna listen in?” Ashe tosses him a sheepish smile. “Yeah, yeah. Get going, I’m right behind you.”

Ashe plants himself just shy of his doorframe and takes stock of the situation. A leather bag, open, its contents spilling onto the ground. Multiple planters tucked next to the wall. Three students dressed in Faerghus blue, all with their backs to him. One student, taller than Christophe and clad in servant’s blacks, meeting every insult with a face wiped carefully blank.

Four ghosts, silent, all with faded dark skin and sad, sad eyes.

Ashe blinks, a painful pressure in his throat. He forces the feeling down. He’s had more than his fair share of meeting dead family members. The stranger’s parents look young, both with faces clearly made for smiling, and the littlest one can’t be more than six years old.

“—not gonna say anything, huh? Don’t know how to speak for yourself? Don't know what to do without your _—”_

“Excuse me!” Ashe calls, sunny and sweet. Three heads whip around to face him in tandem, one fist frozen in mid-air, ready to strike. To someone less accustomed to fear, it might have even been scary. “You’re really causing a scene, you know.”

Then, to the stranger and his family: “Do you know these people?”

The boy shakes his head. “I do not,” he says, tone as carefully muted as his expression. His eyes have gone from distant to sharp in the span of a single blink.

“Listen, man,” one of the students says, clearly knocked off-balance. Ashe, small and fair with spring freckles dusted across the bridge of his nose, looks every inch the part of a pure-blooded citizen of Faerghus.

He keeps the smile tacked onto his face as he plants his body firmly between the stranger and his would-be assailants. “Sure! I’m listening.”

“Uh…” The student’s voice turns light, cajoling. “It’s just, he’s from Duscur, you know? Real funny guy. We’re just—welcoming him. Making sure he knows his place. You know how it is.”

Guileless as ever, Ashe cocks his head and says, “I don’t think I do, actually.”

There’s an uncomfortable, weighty silence. One of the ghosts standing behind the boy—his sister, maybe?—snickers into her sleeve.

“Forget it,” another one of the students mutters, yanking on her friends’ arms as she storms away. “This isn’t worth our time.”

Ashe waits for them to move out of earshot before he kneels down to pick up one of the books that’s fallen out of the bag on the ground. “Are you okay?” he asks, looking up.

Oh. He’s just… standing there. Staring.

Ashe flushes slightly under a pair of watchful eyes. Christophe snorts.

“Ah—yes, I’m alright,” the stranger says, blinking. “I apologize for the trouble.”

“Stupid! Stop apologizing!” his sister hollers from behind him, a terrible scowl plastered across her face. “You don’t even _know_ this guy. If one milk-bread Faerghus boy wants to play hero against three pale-ass Faerghus bitches, that’s on him!”

The ghost who is presumably their mother reaches over to box her ears, her smile not moving an inch. Ashe shudders. _Scary._ “Sana, stop it. He’s being nice.”

“But _Ma,”_ she complains, ducking away on nimble feet. “You know what Faerghans are like. Aside from the princeling, anyway. And the kid can’t even hear us, so it doesn’t matter.” Christophe laughs out loud at that one.

Sana turns her glare on him. “What’s so funny?” she demands.

“Nothing,” he says. “Eyes up, little man. He’s waiting for you to say something.”

Ashe startles.

“Hm? Oh, no, no. It’s no trouble at all,” he says, and puts the book carefully back in the bag. “I’m sorry that people are treating you like this. They don’t even know you. You deserve better.”

The boy considers this. “It is not unfamiliar treatment,” he finally says, measured and mild, stooping to help Ashe collect his books off the ground. “But I am grateful to you for stepping in.”

“Any time.” Ashe extends a hand, beaming. “Oh, I’m Ashe, by the way! It looks like I’m your new next-door neighbor?”

(“Never mind, I take it back,” Sana says to Christophe. “Gods. It’s like looking straight at the sun. Is he always like this?”)

“Dedue,” says the boy who is not really a stranger, now. His hand dwarfs Ashe’s in comparison, palm rough but warm. “It’s nice to meet you, Ashe.”

“Let me help you bring this inside,” Ashe offers. He straightens up and dusts off his knees. “I mean, if that’s okay!”

Dedue seems to give the idea some genuine thought before he shakes his head. “No, thank you,” he says politely. “I appreciate the offer, but I am capable of handling this from here.”

“Dumbass,” Sana says, tired. It reads like an endearment.

Ashe nods. “I’ll see you at dinner, then?”

The corners of Dedue’s eyes crinkle very slightly. “Indeed. Enjoy your afternoon,” he says, gathering up the remainder of his belongings under one arm and swinging his door shut.

The rest of the ghosts—his father, his mother, his baby brother—follow suit, until only his sister remains. She stays behind to squint at Ashe with death-faded, sea-green eyes.

Christophe nudges him. “Well, are you gonna tell her?”

Sana sighs. “Buddy, I hate to break it to you, but we’re _dead_. He can’t see either of us. He’s not gonna say anything to—”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Sana,” Ashe interrupts.

She stops dead in her tracks, mouth hanging open, gaze flickering in disbelief from Christophe to Ashe and back. She takes a couple of steps towards Ashe and watches the way his eyes track her movements, from the tilt of her head to the hand she waves in front of his nose.

Then, softly, with feeling: _“What the fuck.”_

Christophe doubles over and laughs until he cries.

Ashe spends a good part of the next fifteen minutes trying to get Sana Molinaro to stop freaking out. Or, at least, to get her to freak out in the relative privacy of his room, where there are no passersby to curiously watch him trying to get her to stop freaking out. Ashe is good, but he’s not _that_ good, and he’d rather not have to deal with people watching him talk to thin air on his very first day here.

“You can see me.”

“I can.”

“You can _see_ me?”

“That’s right!”

“My family, too?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Gods, that’s—that’s wild.”

A laugh. “Take your time.”

Once her curiosity has been adequately sated, though, she’s happy enough to talk to him—about Dedue, about their family, about what brought them to the academy. Ashe listens, something he knows well, and fields the rest of her questions in turn. Most of them are familiar, simple things, like _so how long have you been able to see the dead?_ and _do you have any siblings?,_ so they’re all relatively simple, familiar answers, like _all my life_ and _yes, one here, two at home._

Sana steals a glance at Christophe, who is sticking his hand into a candle flame and watching it sputter. “You don’t really look like siblings,” she says, almost apologetic. “Just look at you. Even his hair is more like mine than yours.” She pulls her single heavy braid over her left shoulder as an example, thick and glossy and soft. A shining example of what Christophe’s shoulder-length waves might have been, if only he had ever pretended to own a hairbrush.

“My father thinks we’ve got some Duscur blood in us somewhere,” Christophe says.

Sana cocks her head to the side. “Hm… you, I could believe. But him?” She gestures at Ashe with her chin. “This kid is the color of fresh milk.”

“I’m adopted,” Ashe blurts.

Christophe looks halfway between amused and offended. “Why’d you have to say it like that?”

“Ah. That makes sense,” Sana says, nodding sagely.

Ashe puts his head in his hands.

“My parents are dead,” he explains through his fingers. It comes out a little too matter-of-fact, maybe, but it’s a story he’s told too many times. Besides, it’s not like his audience can claim to be uncomfortable with the topic, can they? “They died of plague, when I was eight. Cole and Violet were only four. Christophe’s father, Lord Lonato of Gaspard—he took us in, and treated us like we were his own.”

“Imagine my surprise, twenty-one years old and handed a new set of kid siblings,” Christophe adds, looking down fondly at Ashe.

At that, Sana smiles, and Ashe is struck by just how young she looks, without the scowl. How soft her face goes when she’s not protecting something.

“Dedue and I are barely a year apart,” she says. “Avi came to us when we were nine. For the first few months, we didn’t know what to do with him. He was this quiet, squishy little thing, and I’d never had to deal with a brother who wasn’t my age before.”

“Sounds about right,” Christophe says. Ashe swats at his arm with one of the Loog books. It whiffs harmlessly through the air. “I didn’t have any other siblings, so it’s just Father and Ashe and the twins now.”

Something sad crosses Sana’s face. Not quite pity, but something shaped sort of the same. Ashe decides that he hates it.

“My brother died, but he’s still here,” he says. “Not everybody gets that lucky.”

“Lucky,” Sana repeats.

“I’ve lived my whole life seeing things that other people can’t see,” Ashe continues. “I can help the people other people can’t help. Every ghost has unfinished business, something they left behind—so I try to help them finish it, when I can. Life is hard enough. Death is even harder. Everyone deserves a chance at peace.”

Sana opens her mouth. Closes it again.

“You’re a weird kid,” she finally says.

Christophe peers down at her for a second before ruffling her hair. “Hey, aren’t you more of a kid than he is?”

Sana whirls on him. “Shut up! I’m fifteen! And I died four years ago, so I'm basically nineteen!”

“I’m sixteen,” Ashe says mildly.

“Like hell you are.” Short, dismissive. “You’re tiny. You could be twelve.”

“You—you’re just tall!”

“I’m _average_ for Duscur, thanks. Not my fault you’re a—”

“Kids,” Christophe drawls, “you’re both very small.” He dodges the punch Sana throws with ease. “Say, Ashe, shouldn’t you get going? It must be dinnertime by now.”

Ashe takes a break from pouting at him to look out the window. “Oh, no. When did it get so dark?” he half-wails, scrambling to pull on his boots. “I told Dedue I’d sit with him, I hope he’s not waiting…”

“He’s probably eating with the princeling,” Sana informs him. “You’re late to dinner with the crown prince of Faerghus.”

Ashe blanches. “O-okay! Okay. Sorry, I really gotta go! I’ll see you later!”

He disappears as fast as one of his own ghosts, vanishing into the dark without so much as a single creak of the door behind him.

“He’s a special one, isn’t he?” Sana says, blinking in the general direction of Ashe’s doorway.

“You can say that again,” Christophe agrees. He stands up and starts floating in the direction of the dining hall. “Come on, kiddo. Let’s go catch up with your family. Watching Ashe try to talk to Prince Dimitri is gonna be prime dinner theater.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to new readers: welcome! to readers of a bygone age: welcome back! it seems terribly fitting that a ghost story should come back from the dead like this. :-)
> 
> now, i should explain. i started writing this fic in december 2019 knowing that it would be an enormous undertaking. and then 2020, uhh, Happened, and while the fic was on hiatus and i was scrambling trying to keep things together irl, i realized that
> 
> a) the scope of the story i wanted to tell was far larger than i’d initially thought;  
> b) this was a fic that would never, ever let me rest in peace (lol) if i didn’t finish it.
> 
> so, here we are again! plan for new chapters every 1-2 weeks, but as always, [@redamantian](https://twitter.com/redamantian) on twitter is probably your best bet for news on updates.
> 
> (next time: prime dinner theater. a haunted house. fódlan ninja warrior.)
> 
> you can retweet this fic [here](https://twitter.com/redamantian/status/1307067738704293893?s=20)!


	2. haunted houses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So,” Sana says, “wanna talk about it?”
> 
> Dimitri seems nice. It’s not his fault he’s _mega-haunted._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _All houses wherein men have lived and died  
>  Are haunted houses._
> 
> _— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Haunted Houses”_

There’s something _off_ about the crown prince of Faerghus.

The feeling prickles at Ashe’s skin before he even sits down at the table, a hot plate of gratin in his hands and an apology at the ready. It only gets worse when His Highness turns away from Dedue and pins that earnest smile on _him,_ stirring something leaden and cold in the pit of his stomach. The dining hall hums with the voices of students and ghosts alike. The air crackles in a way that only Ashe seems to notice.

“Ashe, this is Prince Dimitri,” Dedue says, nodding his head towards the young man sitting next to him.

Ashe thinks, not unkindly, that the introduction is unnecessary. Anyone with _eyes_ can tell that Dimitri is important. It’s something bright in his bearing, straight-backed and regal, hardly a hair out of place—everything about him is crisp, from the angle of his nose to the press of his uniform jacket. He leans in to speak with clear, lively eyes, blue as cornflowers pushing through the snow.

 _Like a young Loog,_ Ashe’s brain supplies unhelpfully.

“Pleased to meet you, Ashe,” the prince says. His voice is soothing, solid. It’s not quite enough to counter the dread swirling in Ashe’s gut. “Dedue told me about what you did for him earlier today. You have my thanks.”

“Uh,” Ashe says eloquently, throat full of paranormal sludge. “D-don’t mention it, Your Highness! I only did what anyone else would have done.”

“Many would not,” Dedue counters. He doesn’t smile, exactly, but there’s a steady warmth to the words. His little brother approaches Ashe with a laugh, walking straight through the dinner table without flinching.

“You did what people should do. But lots of people don’t,” Avi informs him. He looks like someone standing in deep water, wide green eyes just barely clearing the table’s surface. “Dodo will let it go, if that’s what you want, but Dimi will keep trying to thank you until you believe him, so you should just let him say it now.”

Ashe covers his smile with a forkful of pheasant gratin. It’s well-made, if a little rich, and there’s a crust of melted cheese around the edges that he’s sure is going to stick to the bowl like no one’s business. He makes a mental note to check in with the kitchens later—he has yet to meet a cookstaff that would turn down a willing pair of dish-washing hands.

“I’m glad I could help,” he tells Dedue, doing his best to ignore the way his instincts scream in warning every time Dimitri glances his way.

Despite this, dinner is mostly pleasant. While Dimitri does most of the talking, Dedue is attentive and ever-present, nudging the conversation back to life whenever it begins to peter out. Avi perches himself on Ashe’s lap, helpfully filling in bits of history whenever there’s a reference that he doesn’t understand; the chill in his legs helps him forget the wrongness in the air, at least for a little while.

Christophe and Sana arrive. Christophe’s form begins to shudder and spark before he’s even halfway through the door.

“Huh,” Sana says. “That’s a new one.”

“Well. Not for me,” Christophe says, brow knitted in confusion. His outline goes fuzzy for a moment before snapping back into place. “Anything we should know about this prince of ours, Sana?”

She hesitates before giving a single shake of her head. “I don’t think I can explain it. If you stick around, you’ll find out soon enough.”

It’s a matter of minutes before they’re joined by two more members of their house—a small girl with bright hair and a tired blonde who informs Dimitri that “Felix refuses to leave the training grounds and Sylvain says he has to spend tonight _leaving a good first impression on the ladies,_ whatever that means.” Ashe manages a smile for the redhead as she sits down next to him, but just barely. The combination of Christophe’s flickering and the high, crackling static radiating from the prince is setting his nerves on fire.

Whenever he looks away, formless shadows flicker across Dimitri’s arms out of the corner of his eye, threatening to lunge if he gets too close.

Ghosts, Ashe can deal with. Even if they scare him sometimes. They’re just people, but more… dead. But if this is what he’s starting to think it is—

Well. He hopes it’s not.

“That’s alright, Ingrid,” says Dimitri, a little resigned. “I don’t know what I expected from either of them. Thank you for trying.”

“Of course, Your Highness.” She sits on the redheaded girl’s other side, diagonally from Dedue. “Oh, this is Annette! I ran into her on the way over, and she didn’t have anyone to sit with, so—”

“I know Annette, actually,” Dimitri says. Both girls turn to look at him, surprise written clear across their faces. “Please, both of you. Your company is always welcome.”

With more people at the table, the pace of conversation picks up. This is both good and bad. On one hand, there’s no longer as much pressure for Ashe to participate. On the other, there’s nothing left to properly distract him from the—whatever this twitching, whispering _thing_ coalescing around the prince is, wrapped like ivy and squirming in cold, dark tendrils around his frame.

“Sana,” Christophe says when he notices, paling, “what the hell is that.”

“We’re not sure,” Sana admits. “He’s been like that since we met him. It’s not a ghost? It fades in and out, but for the most part it just, uh, wiggles. And sometimes, when it’s upset, it—”

Pain roars to life at Ashe’s temples as the shadows let out a long, bone-ripping scream.

“Like that,” Sana finishes weakly.

Ashe’s hand twitches towards his ear on instinct, trying to block out the sound. Across the table, Dedue cocks his head to the side.

“Are you alright, Ashe?” he asks quietly. The other three, currently engaged in a lively debate over the best sweets shop in the capital, don’t seem to notice. “You look pale.”

“Y-yes. I’m alright,” Ashe manages. The static shrinks and crackles, pressure growing pointed behind his eyes. The darkness shrieks without pause. “Just a—headache, that’s all.”

“If you say so,” Dedue says, unconvinced.

Avi twists around in his lap and presses a cool little hand to his forehead. “They do this sometimes,” he says apologetically, the corners of his mouth pulled flat in concern. “But I’ve never seen them this mad. I don’t think they like it when you look at them, Ashe.”

Ashe doesn’t look at them again. He stares at his half-eaten bowl of gratin and answers any direct questions that are asked of him and tries not to vibrate out of his skin as the screaming continues. He’s on the verge of succumbing to a very ungraceful exit when a large, warm hand claps down on his shoulder, followed by a laugh that’s too loud and too close for his liking—

”Hey, this seat taken?” a new voice says, its owner dropping into the seat on Ashe’s left with a wink. The static is starting to make his vision go hazy.

On the far side of the bench, Ingrid props her elbow on the table and raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Oh? What happened to the _ladies,_ Sylvain?”

“They happened!” Sylvain says cheerfully. “Then one of them dumped a beer on me, so.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Annette says, eyes wide.

“You probably deserved it,” Ingrid tells him.

Sylvain bursts out laughing. It is loud, like his hair and his words and his big hands that he keeps shoving into Ashe’s personal space. Ashe decides that he is not above murder.

“That’s nice of you to say,” Sylvain says to Annette, waving Ingrid away with a noncommittal hand. “Maybe I should take _you_ out to dinner inst—”

“Sylvain,” says Dimitri, pained, “please don’t.”

“Right, right.” His smile is relentless as he talks over Ashe’s head. “You’re Annette, right? Gustave’s kid? It’s nice to meet you.” It fades a little when he looks more closely at Ashe. “And you are?”

“Ashe,” he says shortly, one hand fisted in the fabric of his leggings. “Uh. Ashe Duran, from Gaspard.”

“Ah. Hm.” Sylvain takes stock of him for a long moment, something sharp flying across his face faster than Ashe can catch it. “Hey—Gaspard, you said? I think someone was looking for you in the entrance hall, actually. Seemed important. You should go check it out.”

Ashe blinks. “Uh—”

“Ashe. He’s giving you an out. Take it,” says Christophe.

“Thanks, um, for telling me,” he says. He stands and offers the table a hasty bow. “Your Highness. Dedue. Annette, Ingrid, Sylvain. If you’ll excuse me…”

He barely makes it out the door before he breaks into a full sprint, running as far from the prince’s whirling shadow as he can manage.

“So,” Sana says, “wanna talk about it?”

It’s been four days since move-in. In that time, Ashe has seen the prince exactly once. It’s probably a coincidence; after all, classes don’t officially start until the end of the month, and the academy is keeping its students busy with all sorts of placement tests and practice drills in the meantime.

Still, Ashe feels bad. Dimitri seems nice. It’s not his fault he’s _mega-haunted._

He tells Sana as much and she cackles, petting the tortoiseshell cat sitting in the space between her crossed legs. They’re sitting in one of the monastery’s long courtyards, a scroll of math exercises and two separate textbooks propped open on a cloth on the grass. It’s been about three hours since Ashe started, one hour since Christophe wandered off out of boredom. He’s not even halfway done.

“That’s what I don’t get,” she protests. The cat stretches and yawns, digging her claws into the dirt. “You say he’s haunted. But the thing that follows him isn’t a ghost, is it?”

“Not exactly,” Ashe admits. He absently sticks the point of his quill between his front teeth. “I’m not too sure, but I think I’ve seen something like it before, once or twice.”

“Hey, dumbass, there’s ink on that,” Sana points out.

It takes Ashe a full five seconds to confirm that there is, indeed, ink on his quill, which is now in his mouth. He makes a face and spits it out into the grass next to him. Sana sighs and places a hand on the tortoiseshell’s belly. “Anyway. If it wasn’t a ghost, what was it?”

Ashe pauses in the middle of laying one of his textbooks flat on his knee.

“When I was little,” he says carefully, “my siblings and I lived on the streets. It was a tough time. I saw a lot of people who died in a lot of really horrible ways.”

Sana says nothing, faded gaze level. Most of the dead, Ashe has learned, are not terribly judgmental.

“Do you know how ghosts, um, work? I mean—wait, sorry, that might be a bad question.” Ashe shakes his head once, as if to clear it. “I have a—a theory. Ghosts exist because of their connections to the living world, right? There has to be something to resist the pull of the other side. But have you ever seen someone really upset, after they’ve already died?”

Sana nods. “Of course,” she says. “It overwhelms them. They forget who they are, and become their grief instead. They bleed and cry and burn.”

“Exactly.” Ashe has started drawing a diagram in the margins of his math homework. “And they only go back to normal after they’ve calmed down. So what do you think happens to the people who… don’t?”

Sana’s eyes narrow thoughtfully. “It would keep going,” she ventures. Ashe nods, letting his diagram turn into a dark scribbly blob on the side of the page. “Their identities would be consumed by their emotions. They’d lose hold of their form entirely. They’d turn into—huh. That’s pretty smart, Ashe.”

Ashe blushes. “Oh, no. Talk to me again after I’ve finished this worksheet.”

“Sure, okay.” Sana flops onto her stomach next to the cat. “What are you even stuck on? You’ve been staring at this problem for half an hour.”

“It’s battlefield tactics.” Ashe lets out a sad little huff. “There’s more math in it than I expected.”

“Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad. Let’s hear it,” Sana says, encouraging.

“Alright. You asked for it,” he warns. _“A soldier wielding a bronze sword faces a soldier wielding an iron axe. The swordsman is positioned in forested terrain. Assuming all other factors are equal, which soldier has the advant—”_

“Bronze,” Sana says with a yawn.

Ashe blinks. “You know tactics?”

“Nope,” she says, popping the ‘p’ with an impressive amount of force for someone no longer in the possession of corporeal lips. “But I do know a thing or two about metal.”

Ashe stares, curious and wide-eyed. Sana sighs. “I was a bronzesmith, when I was alive. An apprentice, anyway. It’s a common misconception that iron weaponry is superior—a cast iron blade and a bronze one are about the same, in terms of holding an edge. Bronze just takes two metals, so it’s less convenient to make if you’re like Fodlan, constantly waging war on the places that source your copper or tin.” She shrugs. “Steel, though, that’s a different story. And most swords are just lighter and more accurate than axes by design. But does that answer your question?”

“Sana, that’s amazing!” Ashe scans the text with a sheepish smile. “I don’t think it’s the answer they’re looking for, though. There’s this whole… system… in the book. Lots of points, and percentages. It’s called a ‘battle forecast’...?”

“Hey, Ashe!”

The new voice almost makes Ashe jump out of his skin.

“Wh—Annette! You scared me,” Ashe yelps, back pressed to a pillar, one hand flat on his chest. Sana is snickering, trailing lazy fingers down the tortoiseshell’s spine. “I was just. Talking to the cat. You know how it is.”

Annette, who either has detailed conversations with cats in her own spare time or is simply too polite to call him out on it, nods.

“It’s like that sometimes,” she says, taking a seat on the grass across from Ashe. Her bookbag makes a soft thud when it hits the ground. “Ooh, what are you working on?”

“Battlefield tactics,” Ashe says mournfully. “It’s worksheet 1-B in the set they gave us yesterday. I tried reading about the battle forecast system in the textbook, but I think I might die before I finish it.”

Annette giggles. It’s a sweet sound. “Maybe the book just doesn’t put it in a way you can understand,” she suggests. “How do you feel about math, Ashe?”

He doesn’t say anything, but his face seems to speak for itself, because Annette nods and Sana rolls over laughing.

“Got it. I think all you need is a little reframing,” she says. “Can I see your work so far?”

“It’s probably all wrong,” Ashe warns.

Annette is silent as she reads, the tip of her tongue stuck out in intense concentration. “I see,” she murmurs every once in a while, making small annotations over his crossed-out calculations with her own quill. “Set up combat… substitute the weapon’s might and hit… this looks ri—wait. That’s not the right might for a bronze sword, is it?”

Ashe squints at the scroll in Annette’s lap, unable to read the numbers upside-down. “Hold on, I’ll check. What did I say it was?”

“Um, five,” Annette says. “But that’s iron, so I don’t think that’s right.”

Ashe flips to the table of weapon statistics and runs a finger down the leftmost column until he finds the entry he’s looking for. “Ah! It’s… four,” he says feebly.

Sana has rolled onto her back, and is staring at the sky. “An iron sword has a ‘might’ of five, but a bronze sword has a ‘might’ of four? Four _what?_ What does that even mean?” she complains. Ashe decides that this is worth voicing to Annette, who laughs.

“It’s supposed to be an abstraction! It’s a way of predicting how battles will go, based on probability and average statistical measures of—oh, never mind,” she says hastily, watching the way Ashe’s eyes start to glaze over. “Basically, a lot of people took a lot of notes on one-on-one battles, and then they assigned point values to the most common kinds of weapons, to help students learn. It’s not a great system. You still have to account for the people who are fighting, and the terrain, and lucky hits… but, it’s good enough for tactics exercises.”

Ashe doesn’t realize that he’s staring at her with his mouth open until Sana starts gesturing at him to close it.

“Wow, Annette,” he says. “You’re really good at this!”

Annette blushes and shakes her head. “It’s nothing,” she says modestly, which sort of makes Ashe feel bad. It must show on his face, because Annette backpedals faster than he can blink. “I mean, not nothing, it’s just—I went to the Royal School of Sorcery in Fhirdiad, so I had to do a lot of theoretical work like this for my classes. It’s like—I had to hammer my brain into this shape a long time ago, right?” She reaches out and taps Ashe’s forehead with a light hand. “You’re just not used to thinking this way. If you work hard enough at it, I’m sure it’ll get easier!”

“She has a point,” Sana says. The tortoiseshell licks one of her front paws before she walks towards Annette, flops into her lap, and falls asleep on the spot.

“Maybe so,” Ashe concedes. He grins at the cat, a bright toothy smile that nearly doesn’t fit his face. Annette is soundlessly, delightedly freaking out. “That’s settled, then. I’ll give it another try! Could you show me how to set up this problem?”

“I’d be happy to,” Annette whispers. “But if you wake this cat up, I’ll kill you.”

Ashe hides a laugh behind his hand. “Deal,” he whispers back.

Annette doesn’t kill him. Annette is, in fact, the only reason he survives the next seven tactics worksheets that get thrown their way over the next few weeks.

“Do you think we’ll have to do less of these once classes start?” he muses. They’re in the library today, with Dedue and Annette’s friend Mercedes. Dedue’s parents are sitting at an unused table in the corner. Sana is watching Avi climb bookshelves like a squirrel. “I really hope so.”

“I think it depends on which professor we get,” Mercedes says. “I heard that Professor Hanneman gives out more written work than Professor Manuela, but her tests are harder.”

“Both of those sound pretty bad, Mercie,” says Annette, her cheek squished against the table. “And that’s only two professors! Aren’t there three houses?”

Dedue rests a hand on his chin. “When will we find out who our professor is?”

“That’s the thing! Nobody seems to know.” Mercedes leans forward, eyes sparkling. “Wouldn’t it be a sight if we didn’t find out until the week before the mock battle?”

Mercedes, Ashe will learn in about a week and a half, can probably see into the future.

The professor is interesting to Ashe in the same way that ghosts are interesting—something just shy of the wrong side of empty. When they speak, the words are kind but hollow, voice muted, face blank. It’s like meeting the reverse of a ghost. A body without a soul to call it home.

“Meet me at the training grounds in an hour, all of you,” they tell the Lions after a morning of largely-fruitless Q&A. “The mock battle is in a few days, and I want to see what you’re all capable of. I will be your opponent. If you’re a mage, bring your preferred tome with you. Okay? Go get lunch.”

Lunch is a lively affair. Somehow, Mercedes has managed to wrangle their entire class into sitting at the same table. Ashe finds himself sandwiched between Annette, who is rapidly becoming one of his favorite people, and Felix, who Ashe has never actually seen before this very second without a training sword in hand.

By some stroke of luck, Dimitri is seated at the opposite corner—the crackling is nerve-wracking, but bearable, and the shadows don’t seem to care much about him when he’s not looking. It’s a small mercy when he’s already trying to keep up with five conversations at once.

“What tome should I bring?” Annette frets between spoonfuls of saghert. “Since the professor is letting us use tomes, we don’t have to worry about unstable matrices, so I might be able to use _cutting gale…_ oh, but it’d be safer if I just brought _wind,_ wouldn’t it?”

“Annette,” Ashe says mildly, “I have no idea what that means.”

“I know, I know. That’s okay, I’m just thinking out loud.” Annette sighs. “Hey, Felix! What weapon are you planning on using?”

Felix looks up from his untouched bowl. “Sword,” he says, then promptly goes back to staring at his food.

“Yikes,” says Christophe, floating upside-down over the table. “What’s his deal?”

“Oh, Felix wouldn’t be caught dead using anything else,” Sylvain says from Felix’s other side, nudging him with his shoulder. “You should’ve seen him when we were kids—”

“Shut up, Sylvain.”

“—he used to have this tiny wooden sword, he carried it around with him everywhere—“

“Shut _up,_ Sylvain,” Felix repeats, throwing an elbow under Sylvain’s ribs with practiced ease. Ashe winces in sympathy, but Sylvain shrugs it off easily enough, smile unfaltering.

“What about you, Sylvain?” Ashe asks. He takes a spoonful of saghert and lets it sit in his mouth for a minute. It’s sweet; the tartness of the berries cuts nicely through the cream. He wonders how expensive a single bowl would be back home.

Sylvain yawns. “Lance, I guess. My old man’s been drilling me in lancework since I could walk. Might as well put it to good use.”

Christophe sits on the table, just beyond Ashe’s plate. “You really planning on using a bow for this, little man?” he says, doubtful. “I don’t know how good that’ll be for a spar.”

“I’m going to use a bow,” Ashe says to the table.

Christophe sighs. “If you say so. I’ll back you up, then. Just be careful, okay?”

Ashe smiles. Felix doesn’t say anything, but Ashe can feel the way his attention shifts, raking across the side of his jaw.

Sylvain lets out a low whistle. “For a one-on-one spar with the professor? You’ve got guts, Ashe,” he says, reaching his spoon into Felix’s bowl. Felix doesn’t stop him.

Ashe shakes his head. “Not really,” he says. “It’s how my brother taught me, that’s all. I just hope the professor isn’t too tough.”

When they arrive at the training grounds, Byleth is already there, wooden sword in hand. Their training dummy doesn’t look to be faring well, straw spilling out of every possible seam.

“Best two out of three,” says the professor, pointing their blade at Felix, who is shifting his weight from foot to foot with barely contained energy. “First blood to win the round. If you step outside the circle, you forfeit the round. If you yield, you forfeit the round. Understood?”

“Understood,” says Dimitri.

“Let’s spar already,” says Felix, in a tone that suggests that he’s more than ready to leap into the ring and start a match by force.

“Then you’re up first.” Byleth motions for Felix to join them. “The rest of you, grab a weapon and warm up. Mercedes, would you mind being our referee?”

Ashe plucks a training bow off the rack as Felix gets into position. He strings it and tests its weight in his hand, twirling one blunt-headed arrow over his fingers. His eyes track only the professor’s movements, a steady hand against Felix’s unforgiving onslaught.

Christophe, leaning against the wall next to him, chuckles. “You’re really gonna try it, huh?”

Ashe takes a minute to make sure the rest of his classmates are either out of earshot or sufficiently distracted by the fight before he nods. “It’s what you taught me,” he whispers. “Besides, it’s not like I’m alone.”

Christophe laughs out loud as Felix’s back hits the ground with a solid _thunk._

“Round one goes to the professor,” Mercedes calls out.

“I guess that’s true,” Christophe says. “Alright. Pay attention now. Alone or not, it looks like your professor’s gonna wipe the floor with you otherwise.”

Felix, much to his own chagrin, doesn’t end up making it to three rounds. In his defense, neither do any of the people who follow. After two rounds with Felix, two rounds with Dedue, and two rounds with Ingrid, the professor hasn’t even broken a sweat.

“Scary,” Sylvain mutters under his breath, readjusting his grip on his lance. “If anything, I’m just glad we don’t have to face our _own_ professor in the mock battle.”

Dimitri is next; his fight goes to three rounds, each shorter than the last. Sylvain, surprisingly, takes three as well. Annette barely manages two, and slumps into a relieved heap between Felix and Ashe when she’s done.

“Who’s left?” the professor calls from the center of the ring, one hand on their hip.

Ashe steps out from the crowd of his classmates, bow in hand, and says, “Just me, I think.”

Byleth’s eyes graze over the bow, then over his face, and for just a moment, Ashe swears he can see a flicker of interest beneath that calm, level surface.

“Of course,” they say, blinking. “You know the rules by now?”

“Best two out of three, first blood for the round, no out-of-bounds, yield to forfeit,” Ashe recites. He can feel his pulse hammering under his skin, insistent and alive.

Byleth smiles. It comes out sort of wrong—not nearly enough pull, a demonic flash of teeth—but there’s something familiar in it, something tender and well-intentioned.

It’s terrifying. It’s _ghostly._ In an instant, it makes Ashe’s jackrabbit heart feel right at home.

“Okay,” Mercedes says. “Round one, begin!”

It starts off slow—so far, the professor has started every match by waiting for the student to make a move, and so far, every one of his classmates has rushed them headfirst. Ashe takes advantage of the pause to create some distance, steps falling light and quick on the hard-packed ground. It’ll be easier to take aim with a little bit of breathing room.

“Careful,” the ghost of an old groundskeeper warns. “You don’t want to back up too far. You won’t have anywhere left to run.”

“Good,” says Byleth, raising both eyebrows. The single action breathes more life into their face than Ashe has seen all day. “Now, can you hit me from there? Or do you have to get closer?”

Ashe doesn’t waste his breath replying. Instead, he nocks a couple of arrows and lets them fly, one after the other, in rapid-fire succession. The professor dodges them easily.

“Be careful with those,” Christophe hisses. “You’ve only got twelve, and I don’t think you’ll be picking them up before the round ends.”

“Ten, now,” a passing priest points out, his faded beige robes translucent in the sun.

“I know,” Ashe says under his breath. “I’ve got a plan.”

The professor has decided that they’ve had enough of waiting for Ashe to approach. They charge at him in a burst of terrifying speed, sword raised just enough to hint at the direction of their swing. Ashe nocks a new arrow and braces himself against his own fear, forcing himself to wait.

“Kid, get out of the way!” the groundskeeper starts, but Christophe shushes him.

Ashe waits until Byleth is nearly upon him to duck. The wooden blade whistles through the air, narrowly misses his head. At the same time, he anchors himself on one foot, pivots, and looses the arrow into their back at near point-blank range—

It connects with a satisfying thud the second before the professor manages to turn, even as Ashe overbalances and lands face-first in the dirt.

“Break. Point to Ashe,” says Mercedes.

“That was reckless,” Byleth chides, a soft frown on their face. “It was bold, and your footwork was good, but you let me get too close. Bows aren’t meant for close combat, Ashe. Look at the position you’ve ended up in.”

“If that were a real arrow, you’d be dead,” Ashe points out.

This seems to surprise Byleth. It definitely surprises his classmates.

Christophe laughs. “You may be right, beansprout,” he says, “but you probably shouldn’t say it.”

The professor offers him a hand up. Ashe takes it, brushing dust off his uniform jacket. Between the jacket, the hoodie, and the adrenaline, he’s starting to sweat a little.

“Start a little earlier next time,” Byleth suggests. “Your body needs time to prepare to move.”

Ashe nods.

“Round two, begin,” Mercedes says, glancing back and forth between the two of them.

The professor doesn’t waste any time this round; they shove themself into Ashe’s space without giving him time to blink, each slash coming a little faster than the last. Ashe is hard-pressed to keep up. He manages to pull an arrow from his quiver, but there’s no room to nock it, not when it’s all he can do to avoid the professor’s blade.

“Come on, kid,” a few of the dead priests cheer.

Ashe huffs, narrowly dodging a blow to the ribs. He’s being pushed closer and closer to the edge of the ring.

 _Think,_ he tells himself. _You’ve gotten out of worse than this._

A heavy swing comes crashing down towards his head, and Ashe just manages to catch it on the body of his bow instead of with his skull. The impact rattles his teeth, but luckily, it holds. He stumbles backwards.

“Sorry,” says Byleth, taking another swing and not sounding very sorry at all.

Left, right, center. The attacks keep coming, vicious and without pause. There’s no room for him to breathe, _no way out—_

“Watch your stance!” Christophe reminds him. “Don’t tell me you don’t have any tricks left up those sleeves.”

_Right._

Ashe settles his weight back, dodging the next slash with a little more control. He breathes in, one hand steady around a fistful of fletching, and breathes out, hooking the professor’s foot in a trip before he pulls.

It’s quick. It’s _dirty._ Somewhere in the background, he’s distantly aware of someone—Ingrid?—gasping. The professor doesn’t go down, but it’s enough to make them stumble, which is enough to give Ashe the space he needs to nock a new arrow.

Byleth turns slowly, pausing their attack to curiously tilt their head. “I didn’t think someone from the Kingdom would be willing to pull that kind of move,” they say. It’s hard to tell whether they’re impressed or judgmental. Ashe, now safely out of harm’s way, decides that it’s safer to go with the latter, flushing deeply in shame.

“What’s that blush for?” the ghost of the groundskeeper demands. “You did good. Look alive, son, they’re coming your way.”

It’s too late. The slap of wood against flesh stings as the sword finally finds its mark, cleaving dull against his ribs. All of the air leaves his lungs in a pathetic huff.

“Break,” says Mercedes. “Point to the professor.”

“Why did you stop?” Byleth asks, blinking.

Ashe rubs at his side and winces. “I—”

“You shouldn’t feel bad about what you did,” the professor says. They turn to the rest of the Lions, gesturing at Ashe with the point of their sword. “Did you see that? I pushed Ashe into a corner, and he used what little he had to get out of it. That’s the kind of combat I’m here to teach you. The kind that keeps you alive.”

The class, transfixed, collectively says nothing, eyes wide as moons as Ashe and the professor take their places for a final round.

“Round three,” Mercedes says. “Begin.”

If Ashe had thought that the professor was relentless before—they’re brutal without the implicit rules in place, punching and kicking and trying to hook him into falling down every few beats. But this style of fighting is familiar; he bobs and weaves around each strike, biding his time, trying to find a single opening large enough for him to exploit.

Or—any openings, really.

The rhythm is almost hypnotic. He’s starting to feel the strain in his muscles from constantly being in motion. Not enough that he can’t push past it, but he can’t afford to drag this out too long.

“Ashe, watch out!” Christophe shouts, and Ashe only gets to spend about half a second wondering what he should be watching out for before he gets a nice, gritty faceful of sand.

All at once, the world shrinks down. He can’t see anything. Ashe coughs, dust scraping against his teeth as a vague panic starts to set in. If he can’t see, how is he supposed to fight?

“From the left!” the groundskeeper shouts, and Ashe hears the slash as it whips past his ear.

The voices of all of the ghosts gathered around start to take turns, each warning him of a new incoming attack. “Right. Above. Left again!”

Ashe spits out a mouthful of mud and decides that his eyes are a liability. Instead of trying to open them or rub them clear, he keeps them screwed shut, tears tracking hot paths down his cheeks.

“Left. Above. Left! Right!” The ghosts guide him through the professor’s attacks one by one. With only the voices to focus on, his dodges grow sharper with every passing second, struck by a still and sudden clarity.

Ashe feels—good. Light. Untouchable, even.

“From below,” a new, faint voice says, and Ashe obeys without question, dodging the professor’s low sweep before he realizes that it’s coming from the direction of his classmates. From Dimitri.

_Wait! Who are you?_

The voice disappears in a crackle of static before he can even form the words.

Ashe opens his eyes. He jerks back to dodge, drawing back on his bow just enough to cover the distance between him and the professor. The ghosts clamor, yelling at him to get out of the way. His muscles scream, begging for him to stop.

There’s a sword mid-swing above his head, inevitable and true.

Ashe lets the arrow fly.

“So that’s… Dimitri, Sylvain, Mercedes, and Ashe, for the mock battle,” the professor says, back in the safety of the Blue Lions classroom. Ashe, nursing a headache the size of the moon, is only sort of surprised to hear his name on the list. “Does anyone have any questions?”

“I do,” Felix says, twisting around in his chair. He looks almost angry. “You. What _was_ that?”

Ashe shrinks into his seat under his stare. “A… a draw?”

The class titters. Felix makes an unidentifiable noise. Sana claps Ashe on the back, cackling.

“I think," Byleth says, "it's going to be a good year."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so the bad news is, aside from minor prose edits, this chapter _is_ in fact barely different than the one that was initially posted in december. the good news is that ch3 gained a new scene, and every other chapter after that is new content entirely :}
> 
> for those of you who are here because of the update email: hey, welcome back! we're doing this again! read the revised ch1 end notes for more and better details on what's what.
> 
> next time: letters to gaspard. an encounter at the marketplace. an assignment from the archbishop.


	3. domino

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can hear you.”
> 
> “Huh,” the ghost says. “That’s kinda fucked.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _(it’s scaffolding) (it’s supposed to be temporary)  
>  (the domino effect) (had been forgotten about)  
> (it was in storage) (nobody knew where)  
> (that’s a logging road) (you can see its gutters)  
> (they leave handprints) (they shudder with dolor)  
> (nobody could settle on any particular color)_
> 
> _— Dara Wier, “Blue Oxen”_
> 
> **content warning:** while this chapter doesn't involve actual law enforcement, there is a policing-adjacent encounter in which a child is restrained with excessive force. if you need to skip this scene, stop reading after "Ashe would put good coin..." and resume again at "You're alone out here, aren't you?"
> 
> please take care!

_9 th Day of the Harpstring Moon  
_ _Imperial Year 1180_

_To Miss Violet and Mister Cole Duran-Ubert, under the care of the esteemed Lord Lonato of Gaspard:_

_Vi, I know you’re excited, but before you read any more of this letter, go apologize to Perceval. His job is to deliver mail, not get bowled over by 12-year-old girls on his way to the castle._

_Did you do it? No? I’ll wait._

_._

_.._

_…_

_:)_

_So, how is everything back home? Not causing too much trouble for the staff, I hope. Samuel promised to keep an eye on you both, but the kitchens are so busy this time of year—I feel bad enough leaving him alone with the overnights. There’s always so much prep work to be done this month._

_Wow, has it really only been a month since I left? I miss you all terribly._

_I’m having a good time at Garreg Mach, though! My professor is a little intense, but my classmates are all wonderful people. Annette is smart and patient, and Ingrid knows almost as many knight’s tales as you, Cole. I think you’d both like Dedue very much—he’s tall, and kind, and a really good listener. And you, Violet, you’d love Felix. He’s the only person I’ve ever met who’s as bad as you at sitting still!!_

_Classes just started, so things have been pretty busy around here. The professor assigns us a lot of work—but then again, they work pretty hard for us, too, so I can’t complain. The practical exercises are mostly fun, and Annette helps me out with the paper ones. I definitely think I’ve gotten a little stronger (and hopefully a little smarter, haha)._

_I got to fight in a mock battle a couple of weeks ago! Prince Dimitri and Dedue did most of the work, I think, but Mercedes and Sylvain were a big help, too—_

“What about you? You’re really underselling yourself here, buddy,” says a voice, loud and friendly and too close to his ear.

Ashe can’t help it—he whirls in his seat, fist already formed in reflex. It’s nothing too hard. A quick jab, the kind only meant to knock the wind out of someone before bolting down the street.

The pointed smack of skin on skin echoes dully in the near-empty library; it’s only satisfying until his brain catches up with his body.

“I—” Ashe squeaks, cheeks flushed, staring at his fist jammed up against one broad palm. He tries to pull his hand back, but long fingers close over his knuckles, caging him in place. “Um—”

“Whoa, there,” says one Sylvain Gautier, surprised but decidedly unpunched. He doesn’t seem too bothered about it, one brow quirked over laughing brown eyes. “Do you always try to punch people who talk to you?”

Ashe falls back into his chair with a huff and frowns at Christophe, who is sitting cross-legged on the table in front of several thick tomes. Church records, recent accounts of regional history, old class workbooks from the years that he attended Garreg Mach. Something, anything to jog his memory. They’re scattered across the desk like dandelion seeds, open faces bared to the light, many for the first time in years.

“Don’t look at me, little man,” Christophe says, raising his hands with a shrug. “I didn’t think he’d spook you that bad.”

“That depends,” Ashe says, still a little pink at the tops of his cheeks. He pulls his fist out of Sylvain’s grip and shakes it out at the wrist. “Do you always sneak up on people to read their mail?”

“Sneaking? Who’s sneaking?” Sylvain grins, bright and easy. He pulls out the chair next to Ashe, not bothering to cram his legs under the table. “Do I look like someone who sneaks around, Ashe?”

Christophe makes a face. “You sound like someone who’s full of shit.”

“I didn’t even notice you were there until you said something,” Ashe points out instead.

Sylvain waves a dismissive hand. “You were focused. I was just curious about what you were writing! Maybe we had an essay due, or something,” he says, with a charming wink that Ashe understands but does not find particularly impressive.

“You could’ve just asked,” Ashe says, exasperated.

Sylvain shrugs.

“Anyway,” he continues, tapping at the corner of the letter where the ink is already dry. It’s a surprisingly considerate gesture. “I stand by what I said. You should brag about yourself more.”

Ashe casually moves the letter to the far side of the table. “There’s nothing to say,” he says. “I don’t think my siblings want to hear about me providing cover fire the whole time.”

“But that’s not all,” Sylvain presses. That lazy smile never seems to budge, wide and disarming. “The fact that you were chosen for the battle at all says a lot, doesn’t it?”

“He says that like he wasn’t chosen, too,” says Christophe, looking up from the donation ledger laid open on the table in front of him.

Ashe sighs. “Why don’t _you_ go around bragging, then?”

“I do,” Sylvain informs him. His voice turns sly. “Turns out the ladies love a man who’s good with a lance. Maybe ‘cause they know that means he’s good with _his—”_

Ashe cuts him off by clamping a hand over his mouth.

“I take it back,” he says. “I don’t want to know.”

Sylvain makes a muffled noise behind Ashe’s palm, but makes no effort to remove it from his face. “Your loss,” he says when Ashe drops his hand. “But for real, I think I just got lucky. Your spar with the professor? That was insane.”

“You think so?”

“I do.” Sylvain drums his fingers against the cover of one of the many books scattered across the table. “Where’d you learn that stuff, anyway?”

Ashe hesitates. He doesn’t know why. The question is harmless enough; there’s no real reason for him not to answer.

“My brother,” he says. “Like I said, earlier. He taught me everything I know.”

“So you did,” Sylvain agrees, nodding along. He laces his fingers together on the tabletop, then rests his chin atop his hands. “Sorry, I must’ve forgotten. But that makes sense. You and your brother used to train like that?”

“We did,” Ashe says. “The bow was his speciality. It was the only thing I really learned, though.”

“Really,” Sylvain says, gaze sharpening. “Nothing else?”

“Ashe,” Christophe says uneasily. “I don’t like this.”

“Um, yeah,” Ashe says.

“He must’ve been a hell of an archer, then,” Sylvain says. He straightens up and stretches out his interlocked fingers, neck craning as he leans back in his seat. “You’re a little scary sometimes, you know that, Ashe? I’m surprised you didn’t see me coming before. Watching you fight… it’s almost like you’ve got eyes in the back of your head.”

Sitting on the table, Christophe stiffens. Ashe tries and fails not to do the same. Sylvain leans back in and plants a hand on Ashe’s shoulder, pleasant and curious.

“Like you can see things other people can’t,” he continues, crowding Ashe against the table, lips still curled back in that ever-present smile.

Ashe blinks. He can feel his heart beating in his ears.

_Teeth,_ a small, hazy voice at the back of his mind observes.

“Alright, enough of that. Back off,” Christophe says, hopping off the table to stand between the two of them. He reaches out with both of his hands and shoves Sylvain in the chest. Ashe knows what this feels like from experience—there’s no force on impact, but the deep, choking rush of cold hits much the same, bitter as a Faerghus winter.

Sylvain’s expression staggers, and for a moment, Ashe catches a glimpse of that same face he first saw at dinner, curious and wary and unsmiling. Nothing sinister, nothing _mean,_ but something unbearably sharp all the same.

Then he leans back, and withdraws his arm, and patches up his trademark grin so well that Ashe isn’t totally convinced that he didn’t just imagine the whole thing.

“Well,” Sylvain says as he pushes his chair back from the table, yawning widely. “I should get going.” The bones in his back make little popping noises as he twists at the waist. “Nice chatting with you, Ashe.”

“You too,” Ashe says weakly.

He doesn’t mean it. Sylvain must know this. He doesn’t seem to mind.

“But hey,” Sylvain calls over his shoulder as he reaches the door, pausing to lean his weight against the doorframe. “It’s a bit drafty in here, don’t you think? You should get some fresh air, dude. It’ll be good for you.”

Christophe sits back on the edge of the table with a deep sigh.

“Maybe you should be more careful about talking to us from now on, sprout,” he suggests, once he’s sure that Sylvain is well and truly out of earshot. He ruffles Ashe’s hair with a cool, gentle hand. Ashe shivers, but he leans into the touch all the same, closing his eyes.

“You have a point,” he mumbles.

“I usually do,” Christophe tells him, a laugh tucked away behind his words. “Come on. Help me look through these records. I’m sure we’ll find something soon.”

Five days of squinting at tiny columns of handwritten numbers later, all Ashe has found is a headache and some interesting facts about the relationship between Gloucester and Gautier’s cheeseries.

“I’ll go to bed in a minute,” he promises Christophe, who has been fretting about things like “sleep” and “classes” for the past half hour. It’s long since grown dark out. The flame of his candle sputters on the wick, casting strange shadows through his brother’s translucent silhouette.

“You’ll go to bed _now,”_ Christophe says, scowling. “You have tactics in the morning, and Annette is getting tired of bailing you out because you keep dozing through the professor’s lectures.”

It becomes a pattern. During the day, Ashe attends all of his classes, trains until his arms are sore, hangs out with his friends. At night, once he’s sure everyone else is asleep, he slips quietly into the library and strains his eyes under the candlelight until Tomas finds him and has to shoo him back into his own room.

Sylvain, much to his relief, doesn’t bother cornering him again—every time Ashe sees him around the monastery, it’s always the same routine, a smile and a wave and a shouted invitation for him to join whatever group of girls he’s currently entertaining. Whatever he sees in Ashe, he seems to have decided that it’s not a threat. This is a relief. Going to class is much easier when there’s only one person he’s sort of trying to avoid.

Not that he’s trying to _avoid_ Dimitri, per se. The shadows are—unsettling, but if Ashe knows anything it’s the shape of his own fear, and hauntings aside, the prince really does seem like a good person. He maintains a distance that could pass for respectful, but he doesn’t go out of his way to make it cold. At the very least, he isn’t Felix, who absconds the moment Dimitri enters any given room.

Then again, Ashe is starting to think that Felix might just be a skittish person. He’s restless with a blade in hand and doubly so without, and though he’s nice enough to Ashe, he also has a tendency to bristle like a cornered cat whenever they speak alone.

About halfway through the month, the entire class is conscripted into chore rotations. Most of them are put on duty around the monastery, weeding the shrubbery outside the classrooms or mucking out stables. Those left over are responsible for running small errands for the professor throughout the week. Sometimes, this means tending plants in the greenhouse, or putting fresh training dummies together. More often, it means shopping.

Ingrid squints at a scrap of parchment that looks like it might have been ripped from the corner of a worksheet. “Right, the professor wants us to restock on vulneraries… for everyone?”

They’re standing at the entrance to the marketplace, a shopping list in Ingrid’s hand, three thousand gold jingling in Ashe’s pocket. In front of one of the nearby stalls, there’s a group of three girls, laughing and dancing, sporting matching lavender ribbons in their long brown hair. The day is just overcast enough that Ashe might’ve thought them alive at a glance, if not for the way people keep shivering as they walk through them.

“There’s no harm in being well-prepared, I suppose,” he says. “Do you know what the going price is for vulneraries right now?”

Ingrid sighs. “That’s what I’m worried about. I’m not sure we have the funds to restock.”

Christophe, standing on Ashe’s other side, elbows him. “Now _this_ sounds like your kind of math.”

Ashe chews thoughtfully on his lip. “I think it’ll be okay,” he says. “Why don’t we try to go find a vendor? It doesn’t have to be the cheapest one. Just someone who’s willing to talk.”

The marketplace is lively despite the weather, townspeople and Knights of Seiros alike bundled up against the wind. Ashe charts a swift course towards the back of the market. None of the merchants near the front will be willing to haggle—too many eyes, too many people eager to pounce on any hint of a bargain. It’s quieter back here, smaller vendors and specialty shops. The kind of people he could learn to know by name.

“How about that one?” Ingrid suggests. Ashe follows her line of sight to a well-kept stall, shelves piled high with flashy merchandise. He can’t help but think that it seems a bit reckless, leaving so much valuable stock out in the open.

The redheaded shopkeep catches his eye and winks, one finger pressed playfully to her chin, another to the hilt of the wickedly curved blade at her hip.

Ashe turns around.

“Not that one,” he says, pulling a bewildered Ingrid further into the marketplace.

They stop at a more modest storefront a little further in, a hole in the wall with a battered display rack for steel weapons and a gruff-looking man seated behind the counter. He’s built more like a smith than a salesman. Ingrid approaches him without hesitation. “Good afternoon,” she says. “Would you happen to have vulneraries in stock?”

To his credit, the man only takes a moment to size her up. It’s still more than long enough for Ashe to catch the way his face shifts in response to Ingrid’s crisp elocution, the proud set of her shoulders. “Sure thing, miss. How many did you need?”

Ingrid pulls the list out of her pocket again and squints. “Eight—no, nine. Nine would be lovely.”

The merchant turns, plucking nine small bottles from his shelves and dropping them into a nice cloth pouch. It’s a smooth, practiced motion. Ashe is almost expecting it when he holds out a hand and says, “That’ll be three thousand, six hundred gold, please.”

Ingrid’s smile falters. “I’m afraid we—” she begins, but Ashe nudges her with his elbow.

“Leave this to me,” he whispers. He turns to the man with a wheedling smile, a touch of a whine. “Come on, isn’t that price a little high? Surely you can afford to go a bit lower.”

The merchant looks unimpressed—rightfully so—but his eyes are on Ashe, now. Reevaluating. Stacking the neat press of his uniform jacket against the ghost of an accent that he’s sure Ingrid can’t hear.

“You kidding?” he asks, one elbow propped up on the counter. “I’m already cutting you a deal, you know. And I’m sure two fine Garreg Mach students like yourselves can afford to invest in quality equipment.”

“Hm… your wares _are_ quality,” Ashe concedes. There are rules to this sort of thing, after all, and it’s not untrue. “I’m just not sure if I can agree that it’s a good deal! Four hundred gold per vulnerary? The shop over by the gates is selling the same item for a little over half that.”

A lie, but a harmless one.  The merchant’s brow folds into a slight furrow. Ashe heaves a sigh, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Sorry, Ingrid. You were right. Guess we’ll have to head back there after all—”

“Wait,” the merchant interrupts, right on cue. “Let’s—let’s just slow down, okay? No need to head all the way back there. I’ll give them to you for… ten percent off.”

Ashe shakes his head. “Make it twenty percent and you’ve got a deal,” he counters. Then, feeling bold: “Twenty-five and we’ll come back to you for our next bulk purchase.”

The merchant chews on the math for a few seconds. He shakes his head, but the bright laugh that comes with it is promising.

“You drive a hard bargain, kid,” he says. “I can respect that. Tell you what: I’ll give you twenty now, and if you’re brave enough to come back, I might even let you try your luck again next time.”

Ashe’s grin nearly splits his face.

“That seems fair to me,” he says.

Ten minutes, nine vulneraries, and two thousand, eight hundred and eighty gold later, Ingrid turns to Ashe along the marketplace’s main thoroughfare and says, “I didn’t know you were that good at haggling.”

Ashe tenses, a bit, but Ingrid doesn’t sound judgmental about it. If anything, she sounds vaguely impressed. “Thank… you…?”

“It’s a compliment,” she assures him. Overhead, the sky rumbles ominously, a promise of rain within the hour. “It was masterful to watch. My brothers would do well to learn from you.”

Ashe blinks. The words trip out of his mouth before his brain can catch up. “I didn’t think nobles knew what haggling was,” he hears himself admit.

Ingrid is staring at him. Christophe looks almost surprised. Ashe feels all of the blood drain out of his face in real time. “Sorry! I mean—I mean, I _didn’t_ mean—I wasn’t—“

Wait, no, Ingrid is saying something.

“It’s fine,” she tells him, a little bemused. “Ashe, how much do you know about Galatea?”

Ashe looks away. “Not a lot,” he says, ears burning. “Only what I’ve read. I’ve never had the chance to leave Gaspard, so this is the farthest I’ve ever been from home.”

They’ve stopped walking. Ingrid motions for Ashe to take a seat next to her on one of the low stone walls just beyond the next cluster of market stalls.

“Galatea territory lies to the northeast of the monastery, at the base of the mountains that separate Faerghus and Leicester,” she explains. “The winds there are bitter, the land frostbitten and poor. So, even though my family is part of the nobility, we’ve never been particularly well-off.”

“Oh,” Ashe says.

Christophe sits on Ashe’s other side, elbows propped on his knees. “There are many lords in western Faerghus who have… questioned the favor that House Galatea holds with the crown,” he says.

Ashe folds his hands in his lap and tips his head slightly, curious. “Their harvests are consistently meager, and the territory doesn’t have much in the way of other resources. I’m not sure what Father thinks of them,” Christophe adds, anticipating his next question. “But it’s no surprise that they’d have to learn skills like that. Especially the Crestless ones. I’d bet every political theater is an exercise in haggling, when you have so little to offer.”

Ingrid has gone quiet, watching the people of the marketplace walk by. Ashe taps the side of her boot with his.

“I really am sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”

Ingrid shakes her head. “It’s no big deal. You wouldn’t have known,” she says. “Even His Highness and Felix forget, sometimes, and they’ve known me since we were all children.”

Christophe’s voice—not the one sitting next to him, but an echo, a memory from days long gone. _You know, little man, you speak so well, sometimes I forget you grew up on the streets._

“That must be frustrating,” Ashe offers. Ingrid gets about halfway into a shrug before she pauses.

“I suppose it is,” she replies, thoughtful. “I wouldn’t hold it against them, though. The two of them are just as much my brothers as the ones I left back home, even if they sometimes speak without thinking.”

Ashe sets the shopping bag on the ground, hooking his ankle through the straps. “Have you known each other for a long time?”

“Almost all my life,” says Ingrid, with a note of lingering fondness that she doesn’t try to hide. “Sylvain, too. The four of us grew up together.”

Christophe casts Ingrid a quizzical glance. “You’d think sword boy and the prince might get along a little better, for being childhood friends.”

Ashe opens his mouth to ask, but the question never quite makes it there. A sudden flurry of motion, a few stalls down, catches his eye. The ambient volume of the market square swells—there’s a crash and a thud and the rapidly expanding chatter of curious passersby, almost too quick to process in succession.

Ingrid sits up a little straighter. “What’s going on…?”

“Thief! Thief!” somebody shouts, shrill enough to carry over the din of the crowd. “Somebody catch that thief!”

Ashe’s heart leaps into his throat.

Ingrid leaps to her feet.

“Come on,” she urges, and Ashe has no choice but to slip the bag back onto his shoulder and follow as she dashes into the crowd.

Ingrid has sharp eyes and surprisingly good crowd sense. Ashe doesn’t have to tell her to follow the ripples in the usual marketplace traffic, to track the disturbance to get to the cause. She’s fast enough that her lack of subtlety isn’t an issue. Shouts of encouragement follow the path they blaze down the thoroughfare.

He catches a glimpse of their alleged suspect through a break in the crowd as they duck past a woman carrying groceries, and dread drops like a stone into the hollow of his gut—they’re _small,_ all dark hood and skinny limbs, and they move with a desperation that Ashe never wants to see in another human being ever again.

Ashe would put good coin on the thought that they’re currently chasing down a child.

“Ingrid—” he huffs, but Ingrid is already rounding the corner into an alleyway, and Ashe has seen this enough to know how the story usually ends. There’s a sharp yelp, telltale sounds of a scuffle, and then—almost as quickly as it began—Ingrid has the hooded figure in a headlock as they try to kick their way free.

“Let go,” the thief gasps, trying to squirm out of Ingrid’s grasp. The hood slips to reveal a jagged crop of dark hair, furious blue eyes. The kid can’t be older than twelve. “I said let _go_ of me, you _bitch—”_

Ingrid pulls. The girl chokes on her next word. Ashe takes a step into the alleyway and stops dead in his tracks—there’s a flickering, broad-shouldered man standing in the shadow of the dead end, glaring blue and baleful, blood flowing freely from a hole where his heart should be.

“Ingrid,” Ashe repeats, and something in his voice must break, then, because Ingrid and the thief and the ghost all turn to look at him. “Easy. Please. You’re hurting her.”

“She’s a criminal,” Ingrid points out through gritted teeth as the kid kicks her in the knee, but she relaxes her hold just enough for her to breathe without issue. “I’ll let go when we turn her in to the town guard.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. It’s all the wrong things to say. Ashe feels—cold. “I don’t think that’s—”

“Fuck you,” the girl is snarling, thrashing in Ingrid’s grip. “Fuck you, fuck your academy, fuck your _Knights of Seiros—”_

“Hey,” Ashe says gently, hands raised in a gesture of good faith. The girl kicks him in the hip. It stings a bit, but nothing more. “Hey, now. I just want to talk, alright?”

The kid eyes him with suspicion. “Why?” she demands.

“We want to help you,” Ashe says.

She snorts. “Your buddy just said she wants me locked up. Try again.”

“Fine,” he concedes. Ingrid makes an interesting noise. “Then _I_ want to help you. Can you believe that, at least?”

The girl looks him once over, twice. When she speaks again, she sounds more resigned than anything else.

“No,” she says. “I can’t. Not much choice, though, is there?”

Ashe doesn't reply. No need to sugarcoat a truth she already knows.  “So let’s talk,” he says, instead. “What did you take from that merchant?”

The girl looks down and mutters, “Oranges. They’re in my pockets. I was hungry.”

Ashe sighs, one suspicion confirmed.

“And what did you take from my friend?”

The thief stares. “…what?”

“I said,” he repeats patiently, “what did you take from my friend? If you give it back to her, I’ll ask her to let go of you, as long as you promise you won’t run away.”

Ingrid balks. “Hold on, what are you—”

The girl scoffs, but she doesn’t deny his claim. “And what’d stop me from breaking that promise?”

Ashe pulls out a soft, non-threatening smile. “Well, I’d be sad, you know. But I also believe very much in Ingrid’s ability to catch you again.”

The girl goes quiet for a moment. Then, she tosses a coin pouch onto the ground with a faint clatter, dyed leather emblazoned with the Crest of Daphnel.

“There,” she says. “I did what you asked. Now make her let go.”

Ashe meets Ingrid’s unspoken question with a slight nod. Ingrid releases the thief and stoops to pick up her coin purse with wary eyes. The girl stretches, too thin under the threadbare folds of her hoodie, and crosses her arms to face him again.

“You’re alone out here, aren’t you?” Ashe asks, soft, and the girl’s face crumples for a split second before she scowls and nods. The blue-eyed ghost frowns, reaching out to pet her hair. “Why didn’t you go to the Church? There are programs in place here, to help people like—”

The girl’s face darkens.

“I’ll _never_ go to the Church of Seiros for _anything,”_ she spits. “I don’t need them waving me around like some—like some sort of charity case. Some kind of trophy to cover up all of the horrible things they do.” Her voice goes low, venomous. “I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, mister, but at least you seem like you’re still a person. I hope you leave before you learn how to become a kn—no. Before you become a _murderer.”_

Ashe breathes in.

Ashe breathes out.

When he blinks, the girl is gone.

“No,” he says faintly, when Ingrid moves to pursue her. She pauses mid-stride. “I’m... I’m sorry. That was—that was my fault. But I really think we should just leave.”

Ingrid settles back against the wall with a frown, one hand still folded over the coin purse in her pocket. “She was a thief, Ashe,” she starts, hesitant. “Is it—right? To let her go like—”

“She was hungry, Ingrid.”

Ashe swallows past the lump in his throat and looks Ingrid in the eye, willing her to back down, willing her to reach into that part of herself made of cold winters and failed harvests and _understand._

Ingrid looks away after a few seconds.

“Alright,” she says quietly.

The storm breaks over the town of Garreg Mach with a thunderous roar. Ingrid has probably long since delivered the vulneraries to the professor. Ashe hopes that she is somewhere inside, safe and dry and eating dinner with Felix or Sylvain or Dimitri.

Christophe is hopefully hanging out at the monastery with Dedue and his family. _Fine,_ he’d said, sounding very much like it was _not fine_ but unable to refuse Ashe’s request anyway. _Just make sure you’re back by sundown. I’ll hunt you down if you don’t._

“Hey, kid. You’ll catch your death,” says a deep voice behind him.

He turns slowly, blinks through rain-soaked bangs at the broad frame of the ghost with the bright blue eyes and a black hole through his chest. The man sighs. “Hate to see that happen to the first person in this damn town who showed my daughter kindness.”

Ashe says nothing. The ghost clucks his tongue, displeased.

“I don’t think that brother of yours would be too happy about it, either,” he says. “Come on, little guy. I know you can’t hear me, but we gotta get you outta this rain.”

“I can,” Ashe says, voice rough from watching the thinning crowds in silence.

The ghost blinks. “What?”

“I can hear you.”

“Huh,” the ghost says. “That’s kinda fucked.”

Ashe lets out a watery laugh. “Kinda,” he agrees. For a minute, there’s nothing but the sound of rain hitting the cobblestone.

Then: “You don’t have to answer this, if you don’t want to. But—about what your daughter said… how did you—”

“Die?” the man finishes. He thumps the gaping wound in his chest with one hand, almost wistful. “Someone ratted me out, probably. The Knights of Seiros broke into my house. Levin Sword, too close-range—bolt took my heart clean out. Poor kid saw it happen.”

Ashe shivers. “That’s awful.”

The ghost shrugs. “Might’ve been inevitable. I was a bandit, y’know. I hurt my fair share of people.”

“Why?”

“Well, I had a daughter,” the man says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “And I didn’t want to see her starve. And unless you get real lucky, that’s just the way the world works for people like us.”

He throws back his head and lets out a loud guffaw, startling Ashe badly enough to make him jump. “But here I am, watching her starve without me anyway, huh?” A pause, a long sigh. “Man. Shit’s fucked.”

Ashe says nothing.

The ghost says nothing.

The rain comes down in sheets.

Halfway through the third week of the month, the professor gives them their first official briefing.

“Zanado,” they say, perched on the edge of their desk, leaning forward like they’re having an engaging teatime conversation and not in the middle of teaching a lecture. “It’s a sacred site for the Church of Seiros, or so I’m told. Our job is to clear out some bandits who’ve taken up residence there.”

Annette raises her hand. “Professor, by _clear out,_ do you mean…?”

Byleth does not blink. Even the rest of the class is starting to get used to this, Ashe thinks, glancing around the room. Dedue is sitting in his customary seat next to Dimitri, his family seated at the empty desks behind them. In her front row seat, Annette still has her hand in the air. Next to her, Ingrid sits attentive, waiting for the professor to speak.

Ashe and Ingrid haven’t talked about the marketplace incident. They’ve done more shopping since then, and they’ve met up in the library to discuss books and other similar, safer topics, but Ashe gets the feeling that they won’t be trying that conversation any time soon.

“The archbishop didn’t specify. Either way, it will be a real battle—nothing like what you’ve faced up to this point,” the professor warns. “These people will want to kill you. You may be forced to kill them. It’s not impossible that you may die."

A heavy silence settles over the room. Even Sylvain, usually the first to ruin the moment, is uncharacteristically quiet.

“...not that any of you will die,” the professor adds, and Ashe could swear that there’s a faint note of embarrassment in the way they hastily tack the words onto the tail end of their last sentence. “A battalion from the Knights of Seiros will be with us, and I will also be with you. You’ll all be fine. You’ve studied hard, and you’ve trained hard—this is your first step towards becoming the officers of a new age.”

_I hope you leave before you become a murderer._

Ashe slumps in his seat.

“I’ll be assigning you less homework during the week leading up to the battle,” Byleth says. “Take care that you use the extra time to rest. I want all of you in top condition by the time we march.” Ashe is sure that he isn’t imagining the pointed looks at him and Annette and Felix. “If you think you’re ready to take one of the basic certification exams, see me after class—I think I have a good idea of your strengths, but if you’d like to discuss your class path with me, I’m open to discussion.”

“Thank you, professor,” says Dimitri. “We’ll all work hard. Your teaching will not have been in vain.”

“It was never in vain,” Byleth replies, blinking. “I have faith in all of you.”

“Aw, professor,” Sylvain and Annette both cry at the same time. Mercedes giggles. Felix scowls.

“You’re annoying,” Felix tells Sylvain bluntly, crossing his arms and turning his head with a pointed huff.

Annette pouts. “Felix, don’t be mean!”

“I’m not being mean.”

“You called Sylvain annoying!”

“To be fair,” Ingrid points out, with a glance at the professor, “he is annoying.” Byleth doesn’t protest.

“You’re annoying, too,” Felix grumbles.

“Wh—Felix, I’m _on your side—“_

“Sorry, can we back up a second? I think we should all back up a second,” says Sylvain. “Look, Annie and I said the same thing. So if Felix thinks I’m annoying, that also means that Felix thinks _Annette_ is annoying. Right?”

“That makes sense to me,” Mercedes says, nodding sagely.

Felix sputters. “I don’t think Annette is annoying,” he mumbles. Ashe is sure that he can only hear the words because he sits in the desk right behind him.

“Say it louder for the class, Felix?” Sylvain asks, leaning across the table to bat his eyelashes at him. Felix proceeds to push him off the desk with a resounding _fuck you._ Laughter cuts through the resulting chaos, sweet and bright as the room erupts into shouts and half-baked attempts to restore some semblance of order. Ashe rests his face on the desk in front of him.

He’s lucky to be here, he thinks, something strange blooming in his chest at the thought of the people around him. He’s lucky to be here, among friends. He’s here for something else entirely, for his brother who died and left so much of himself undone, but still—he’s lucky to be _here,_ pursuing the knighthood he’s always dreamed of.

It should be enough. It _is_ enough.

Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you skipped the scene, a summary: ashe and ingrid catch the thief in an alleyway. ingrid restrains her and tells ashe that they should bring her to the town guard. ashe is very uncomfortable with this idea. he convinces the girl to talk to him, and learns that she is an orphan who's been stealing food to get by.
> 
> next time: flowers from duscur. the red canyon. keep your paints wet; i have things to say.
> 
> @redamantian on twitter for updates!


	4. cities of the yellow field

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They don't feel like the heroes of this story.
> 
> This story doesn't feel very heroic at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Gold bodies on the red, red ground. I paint in  
>  the wounds. Socket, says the shoulder. Shoulder, says  
> the socket. Let’s kill everything, says everything else.  
> Smeared night, smudged dawn. I saw him fall. Them,_
> 
> _falling. Split and felled and pounded into the ground.  
>  We knocked the heads off the statuary, deprived  
> the landmarks of any meaning. Victory swelling  
> in the occupation. History is painted by the winners.  
> Keep your paints wet. Trust me, I have things to say._
> 
> _— Richard Siken, “Landscape with Several Small Fires”_

The night before they set out for Zanado, Ashe finds himself in the greenhouse.

Christophe has been badgering him to get some sleep since the sun went down, but Ashe isn’t tired—it’s not even midnight yet. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep for a while, not until the sun crests the horizon and his eyes grow too heavy to hold open.

_If you say so,_ Christophe had said, doubtful.

Then, drawing himself up to his full height, imposing if not quite solid: _but you’re not allowed anywhere near the library, okay?_

For once, Ashe doesn’t have it in him to argue. The past few nights of poring over the church’s endless records have been more frustrating than productive, and he never seems to have the library to himself anymore, either. Between dodging through bookshelves to avoid Claude and hiding from Linhardt in the alcoves, he’s probably wasted more time than the information is worth.

But still, there’s too much on his mind to stay cooped up in his room all night, so—greenhouse it is.

Ashe pushes at the door. It swings open without resistance. Like everything else at the monastery, someone must keep these hinges well-maintained.

He pauses in the doorway and takes a moment to adjust to the relative dimness inside the building, humid warmth clinging to him like a second skin. It takes a few more moments for him to realize that he’s not alone. There’s a torch propped up carefully near the back corner of the building; someone is kneeling over one of the free pallets behind the professor’s vegetable garden, oblivious to the two translucent figures at their side. Whoever it is, they’re humming loud enough to echo against the high ceiling, a song that Ashe is sure he’s heard before but can’t remember where.

One of the ghosts looks up and grins.

“Ashe! Christophe!” Avi calls, scampering across the greenhouse to tug on Ashe’s hand.

“Hello,” Ashe whispers under his breath. He squeezes his open palm into a fist where Avi’s hand should be. “It’s late, you know. What are you guys up to?”

“See for yourself,” Avi says proudly. He’s already floating back towards the pallet, where both his mother and brother are hard at work.

Ashe lets the door click as it shuts. Dedue startles at the sound. He’s not in uniform, Ashe realizes—he’s kneeling there in his undershirt and a set of plain trousers, sleeves pushed up to the elbows, wrist-deep in dirt and more tiny plants than Ashe can count.

The second their eyes meet, Dedue’s frown goes soft with recognition, the tension cut from his shoulders like a knife through frayed rope. Without a word, he motions for Ashe to join him.

Ashe jogs the rest of the distance across the greenhouse, squatting down next to the pallet with his elbows propped on his knees. For a minute, they sit in amicable silence; he watches Dedue push little divots into the earth with his fingers, smiles at his mother when she fusses over the depth of the holes he’s leaving.

These plants don’t look anything like the ones native to the forest surrounding Gaspard. Ashe knows a lot about those, the kinds that Lonato used to teach him and Violet, plants to eat and plants to avoid and plants to rub on bug bites to make the itch go away. These are different—each planter full of strange shapes and colors, some round and bulbous and shiny, others covered in pale, feathery spines. The longer he looks at them, the less certain he is that they grow in Fodlan at all.

It must show on his face, because Dedue’s mother laughs.

“Have you ever seen plants like these before, Ashe?” she asks, amused, the warm curl of her accent far more pronounced than those of her children. Ashe answers with a single, subtle shake of his head. “I believe you would call them succulents. They were easy to find, once, in the more arid parts of Duscur.”

“We didn’t live in the desert,” Avi chimes in, “but all the forests are gone, now. The kingdom burned them down. I don’t know if they’ll ever grow b—”

“Avi,” his mother says. For a split second, her outline flickers, the faint, metallic tang of blood souring the air.

Avi clamps his mouth shut.

The greenhouse is too quiet to speak without Dedue overhearing, so Ashe says nothing. He looks at the plants—the _succulents_ —and tries to picture them in full sun, fleshy petals sprawling beneath the open sky. He tries to imagine it, Duscur in all its glory. Hard as he tries, the image keeps coming out blurry.

He looks at Avi and tries to picture him—six years old for real, leaves crunching under his boots, curious and bright and _alive—_

“Is there something on your mind, Ashe?”

Dedue’s voice startles him.

Ashe shakes his head.

“I… couldn’t sleep,” he offers. It comes out weak, but it’s honest enough.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Dedue finishes pressing another dent into the dirt, absently pointing his chin towards one of the loose cuttings in the planter on Ashe’s other side.

It’s a small, thoughtless gesture. Ashe has watched Sana do it dozens of times. He passes the planter over to Dedue before he can ask for it out loud, and pretends not to notice when Dedue blinks in surprise before thanking him.

“Maybe later,” he says after a beat. “Tell me about this, first.”

Dedue doesn’t pry. “What would you like to know?”

“Well, I remember these,” Ashe starts, nodding at the planters scattered haphazardly on the ground. “You had them with you when we were moving in, right?”

Dedue pats the soil down gently around the base of the plant in his hands. “That’s correct,” he says. He pushes his first two fingers into the ground, making space for the next. “They are cuttings from plants I used to keep at the palace.”

“I’ve never seen anything like them,” Ashe says. Even he can hear the wonder in his own voice. Dedue doesn’t look up from the pallet in front of him, and it’s hard to tell in the low light, but Ashe doesn’t think he’s imagining the pleased little crinkle at the corners of his eyes.

Ashe passes him another planter, this one full of strings of bright, verdant beads. “Are they from Duscur?” he asks, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it anyway.

“They are native to Duscur, yes.” There’s a note in Dedue’s voice that Ashe can’t quite place, somewhere between pride and uncertainty. “At least, I believe so. I have only been able to find them from vendors in the Duscur district of Fhirdiad, so I collect them, when I have the chance.”

“It’s quite the collection,” Ashe says. “I can see that you’ve taken good care of them.”

When Dedue smiles, he looks like his mother. This isn’t the first time Ashe has noticed, but here—in profile, in torchlight—the resemblance is so sharp it aches.

He wants to tell him. He wishes he could tell him.

“Dedue has always loved gardening,” his mother adds. She’s sitting straight-backed and cross-legged on the near edge of the pallet, watching over Avi while he walks up and down the length of each wooden beam. “Even when he was very small, he preferred the field to the forge. We were a smithing village by trade, but he never did enjoy hitting things.”

Ashe watches Dedue smooth out the soil around the cactus’ base, unafraid of the spines biting into the leather of his gloves. He seems comfortable here, quiet and covered in dirt, at ease in a way that Ashe has never seen around their classmates. It’s a different kind of focus than the one he has when he’s standing at Dimitri’s side, watchful and wary, or when they’re at the training yard, beating training dummies until they start bleeding straw into the dust—

“Dedue,” Ashe says, “are you nervous about tomorrow?”

Dedue’s hands still.

“Nervous?” he repeats, sitting back on his heels. His voice is mild, free of judgment. “...no. No, I do not think that is the right word. Are you?”

“Maybe a little,” Ashe admits, crossing his arms. “I’m… I’m no stranger to fighting, you know. But it’s like the professor said—people are going to die tomorrow. I understand doing what you need to do to survive, but…”

“Ah.” Dedue has turned to face him fully now, blinking in the firelight. “It is not an easy thing to think about, is it?”

Ashe shakes his head.

“Are you worried?”

“I don’t know,” Ashe says. He takes a breath. His whole body shudders with it. “I know what I have to do. If I want to be a—if I want to be able to protect people—then I’ve got to.” His eyes land instinctively on Christophe, who is currently letting Avi make tiny braids in his hair. “But they don’t really warn you about this in the books, do they?”

Dedue’s expression flickers first in surprise, then in recognition.

“You do not know if you can,” he says slowly. It’s not a question.

Ashe is going to be a knight, someday. Ashe is going to keep his siblings safe. Ashe is going to make Lonato proud.

Ashe sees dead people.

“I know what I have to do,” he repeats, fists scrunched in the fabric of his uniform pants. “I’ve always known. That hasn’t changed. I don’t… I don’t want it to be easy.”

Dedue, frowning, hands him a small, downy plant with wide, flat petals. “Then it will not,” he says. “If you were the type of person to find killing easy, then we would not be having this conversation.”

Ashe manages a laugh, thin and unsteady. “I suppose you’re right,” he says after a beat.

He stares at the plant in his hands for a few more seconds before pressing it gently into the soil, smoothing dirt around the base of the rosette. “I’m sorry. I just—”

“It’s alright,” Dedue says, cutting him off before he gets the chance to finish. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

The pallet in front of them is full now, overflowing with baby blooms, silvered in the light of the moon filtered through the greenhouse ceiling. It may not be the desert, Ashe thinks, but they look pretty happy here, too—still alive, despite everything that came before.

“Then thank you,” he says instead. “For letting me help with this.”

Dedue chuckles. It’s a warm, rumbling sound. It makes Ashe feel like he’s bearing witness to something he hasn't yet earned the right to see.

“I should be the one thanking you,” he tells him. “I would not have been able to finish this all tonight without your help.”

“It was no trouble at all,” Ashe says, fidgeting a little with the strings of his hoodie. “Say—if you ever need help, um, taking care of them…”

“You are the first person I will call.”

Ashe beams. Dedue moves as if to stand, so he follows suit, ignoring the way his thighs twinge in protest after squatting for so long.

“It is late,” Dedue says. He hesitates before he continues. “I am heading to bed. You should also try to get some rest, Ashe.”

“I’ll try,” Ashe promises, making no move to follow him. It is, like most things he says and does, not strictly a lie. “Goodnight, Dedue. Sleep well.”

Dedue casts one last glance over his shoulder.

The greenhouse door clicks softly shut.

“You are so fucking stupid,” Sana says.

It is morning. Ashe has not slept. Sana is being unfair; besides, he stopped feeling tired two hours ago, so judging from the faces around him, he’s still doing better than most of the other Blue Lions.

Sana raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Not how that works,” she tells him. Ashe wonders about this for about half a second before it dawns on him that he is mumbling out loud.

“Sorry,” he says absently, shoving his hands into his pockets against the morning chill. His new iron bow shifts with the motion, cold against his back even through two layers of cloth and leather. “Long night.”

“Yeah, I heard.” Sana’s voice softens by a fraction. “If I’d known you were still awake, I’d have brought Avi back to your room to visit.” Ashe smiles a little at the thought.

Christophe nudges her. “Where were _you_ last night, Sana?”

Sana nods with a quick jerk of her chin towards the front of their group, where Dimitri, Dedue, and the professor are walking together. The professor is probably talking about the logistics of today’s mission; Dimitri’s head is angled attentively, fair hair washed flaxen in the early light. His shadows seem tame today, curled almost demurely around the lean lines of his arms, disappearing into the metal of his gauntlets.

“Keeping an eye on the princeling,” she says. “His room is right above Dedue’s, and he wouldn’t stop pacing, so _abbu_ and I went upstairs to check on him.”

A single dark tendril snakes up Dimitri’s sleeve to pet at his cheek. Ashe fights the shudder that crawls up his spine. “Is he alright?”

“More or less,” Sana answers, unbearably cryptic. She squints in Dimitri’s direction. “Those—those things, the ones that follow him—they seem better now, at least. He’s lucky he can’t hear them. I’m going to have a headache for weeks.”

Ashe rubs at his eyes and stifles a yawn, lifting one gloved hand to cover his mouth. The air hangs crisp and still, interrupted only by the clanking of the knights’ armor and the dull patter of his classmates’ boots on stone.

“I didn’t know ghosts could get headaches,” he says.

Sana makes a face at him.

Ahead, the professor and the prince continue to speak in low voices, Dedue offering the occasional nod or hum when asked. Annette and Mercedes trail behind them, their linked hands the only thing keeping one or both of them from stumbling off the path at any given time. Sylvain has somehow managed to sling his arms over both Ingrid _and_ Felix’s shoulders, much to the apparent dismay of everyone involved.

A knight accidentally passes through Christophe’s left arm and shivers, casting Ashe a look that he can’t quite decipher through their visored helmet. They hesitate for just a moment before reaching over to clap him on the shoulder with an armored hand. “You’re looking awfully worried, kid. First time on the front lines?”

He nods mutely. The knight chuckles. “These bandits shouldn’t pose much of a threat. Just do what your teacher tells you and you’ll be fine.”

_If they don’t pose a threat, then why do we have to kill them?_

Ashe isn’t dumb enough to question a Knight of Seiros. He stays quiet as they ruffle his hair. He thinks of the girl in the marketplace. He thinks of her father’s ghost.

_Maybe it was inevitable,_ the ghost of the ghost who lives in his brain says.

Ashe watches the shape of Dimitri’s back, haloed by the steadily rising sun, darkness licking at his silhouette like an eager hound.

He wonders—not for the first time—how any of them were able to sleep at all.

The Red Canyon is, by all accounts, beautiful. The sun slides into place overhead as they stop to rest before heading down into the canyon proper; clean light and clear blue skies offset the rich, rusted sprawl of the landscape below. It is like nothing that Ashe has ever seen before. It makes him feel small, in the way of cathedrals and kings, an inconsequential part of a much greater whole.

“The bandit leader is hiding with his men further into the valley,” the professor says. They do not have to raise their voice to be heard. When Byleth speaks, time interrupts itself to listen. “They know we’re here, so we may not be able to surprise them, but we can make sure there’s nowhere for them to run.”

Something tightens in Ashe’s chest. He tries not to let it show on his face as the professor continues.

“We’ll cross the bridge together before splitting into two groups,” they say, drawing a crude diagram in the orange dust with the tip of their sword. “Dimitri, Mercedes, Ashe, Felix. I want you to take a group of knights around the western side to cut them off. Push through, if you can.”

“Yes, professor,” Dimitri says. Felix looks away, but says nothing.

There’s something—strange, here. From the moment they begin their descent, he feels it, pressing at the base of his skull like a memory trying to resurface: a whisper behind closed doors, a song with no name. Ashe pulls his bow from his back and sneaks a glance at his ghosts, but neither Sana nor Christophe seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary.

It’s eerily quiet, once they’ve crossed the bridge. Ashe shifts his weight, the grip of his weapon rough against his sweaty palm, and listens to the wind whistle out of time with his breathing.

In the distance, there’s a shout. Byleth opens their mouth. Ashe blinks, and for a split second, there are two hands raised high towards the deepest part of the valley—one gloved and familiar, the other small, delicate, the hand of a child.

“Move,” the professor commands, and the world dissolves into motion.

Dimitri and Felix spearhead their side of the charge, and though Felix refuses to even _look_ in the prince’s direction, the two of them work well together. Felix becomes a whirl of cold steel, blade singing into the flesh and bone of his foes, and Dimitri uses his strength and longer reach to ensure that Felix never becomes overwhelmed.

They are—efficient, about it. Clean, even. Their weapons are led by justice, bound by honor. Ashe has read enough of the high tales to know: it is the embodiment of what Faerghus acknowledges as strength, trained into the nobility from birth so that they might serve their kingdom well.

Ashe has never really given much thought to what a body sounds like when it hits the ground.

He follows their lead like a leaf dragged along by a river’s current. He raises his bow, pulls with numb fingers, looses a bolt into a shoulder. A knee. A rock. It’s all Ashe can do to keep up as they press onward. Each new _thud_ hits him like ballista fire.

There is a rising sickness in his gut as his quiver grows lighter. He hits none of his targets, and does not take the time to name the feeling that comes with it.

They don’t feel like the heroes of this story. This story doesn’t feel very heroic at all.

_“Shit,”_ one of the bandits nearly wails, three octaves higher than the rest of his shouts, and it might have been almost comical if he hadn’t just barely dodged the arrow that had been in Ashe’s hand a moment prior. The bandit meets his eyes from across the bridge, wide and blue and full of terror. “Kostas, you bastard, who’d you piss off this time—?”

_The Knights of Seiros,_ says a ghost, or a ghost of a ghost. _That’s just the way the world works, for people like us._

The bandit makes a gurgling noise. There is a wet lance tip protruding from his back. It glints in the sun.

Ashe hears another voice, distant, as if through deep water. He does not move. He is staring at the body, the jagged wound, old wood and dry earth sucking up blood as readily as rain.

“Ashe,” the voice repeats, more insistent, and then Christophe’s hand is on his forearm, cold like midwinter, biting and present. Ashe jumps. “You okay?”

“I’m alright,” his mouth says, in a voice that isn’t his. He is staring at the body. The sight crackles like a raw nerve. “I’m fine. If—if it wasn’t him, it—it would have been me.”

Several things must happen next. He shoots, or he moves. He moves, or he shoots. He doesn’t hit anything.

There’s another hand on his arm, too soft, too gentle for a battlefield—Mercedes is asking him something, but he doesn’t understand the words—

He must have tripped. Dust in his mouth. Gravel in his knees. Sun in his eyes. When Ashe was a child, stale bread in his pockets—the world came to him like this back then, too, a series of still images with nothing in between.

A flash of bright light—

_Clang!_

—something wet and warm on his back.

“What,” hisses Felix as he pulls his blade out of a man’s stomach, “do you think you’re _doing,”_ reaching down to yank Ashe to his feet, _“you absolute fool?”_

Ashe blinks. Felix’s eyes are a deep, beautiful amber, and there is blood spattered across his cheek. It must be the same, Ashe thinks, as the blood that is already starting to dry tacky across his back, beneath the leather of his armor.

Maybe. Maybe it is different blood. Felix has killed a lot of people today. The ground around them is littered with bodies that do not move.

“Come on,” Felix is saying, enunciating each word slowly, carefully. It dawns on Ashe that this is what _worry_ must look like, on Felix’s face. “We’re meeting up with the professor. Don’t fall behind.”

Goddess, he’s—he’s so tired.

Ashe lags just a little behind everyone else as the rest of the class comes into sight over the horizon. They have the bandit leader pinned down in his makeshift fortress. They are familiar shapes, small and blonde and big and red, and their weapons scream through the air without any sort of hesitation.

Byleth locks eyes with Ashe, and for a moment he thinks he can see their eyes go wide.

“Ashe,” they shout, which is strange, because the professor doesn’t shout, not ever. “Turn around—”

He hears it before he sees it, the axe blade whistling towards him. Ashe turns. The bandit is already close enough for him to see her face, desperate and furious, her own blood dripping from one temple.

She’s close, but not too close. Ashe could leap back now, draw his bow and bury an arrow in her heart. He’s agile enough, he knows. His body is the one thing that’s never failed him, fighting tooth and nail to keep him alive even under the most hellish of circumstances, a clever instrument fine-tuned for his own survival—

He doesn’t. He doesn’t move.

_I don’t want to kill you._

There’s pain, first. The sound of metal tearing through flesh. A scream.

Ashe thinks, vaguely, awfully, that it might be his own.

Then:

Nothing.

Ashe opens his eyes.

Consciousness trickles in slowly: the rasp of his own breathing, the wild thump of his heartbeat in his ears. He flexes his fingers and finds dirt under his nails, hard earth against his bare palm. The sky above is a dusty blue, spattered with pearlescent clouds. A light wind rustles damp and sweet in the distance.

It’s… quiet, he realizes. There’s no ghost chatter, no fragments of conversation snatched up by the breeze. Even before the plague, before Christophe, before everything—Ashe can’t remember a time when the world was ever this close to silent.

It’s almost as unsettling as the face that pops into view half a second later.

“Oh, good, you’re awa—”

“Wh—ah!”

Ashe sits up too quickly. His forehead meets the stranger’s jaw with a resounding _crack._ His back hits the ground, knocking the breath out of his lungs as they stagger backwards.

“Alright,” he hears them mutter as he presses a hand to his head, wincing. “Okay. That one may have been my fault.”

“N-no, I just—” Ashe stammers, scrambling to apologize on instinct. He manages to haul himself into a half-seated position, weight propped on one elbow. “I’m so sorry, it’s—”

He looks up and his voice dies in his throat. There is a woman looking down at him, one hand on the hilt of the sword at her hip, the other rubbing at her chin, faintly dismayed. She is dressed in white cloth in a loose, unfamiliar style, and her hair is cropped close to her head, curled soft and green around her ears.

She is very beautiful. This is not why Ashe is staring. Ashe is staring because those ears are long, and pointed, and definitely, _definitely_ not human.

“—alright,” he finishes lamely. “It’s, alright. I just wasn’t expecting it.”

The small frown on the woman’s face turns up at the corners. “How gracious of you,” she says. Ashe flushes beet-red before it registers that she’s making fun of him.

He shakes his head once, twice, trying to settle his thoughts. He’s sitting in the middle of an empty street—there are houses all around them, built from a yellow-orange clay, the same color as the dust swirling through the valley below. Aside from the woman, there’s not another soul in sight.

Ashe turns to face her again. She is studying him like one might study a brightly colored bird, or a particularly fascinating insect. He allows himself one more glance at her pointed ears, questions upon questions filling up the space in his throat.

He settles for what he figures is the most important one. “Who are you?”

The woman looks almost startled. “Who, indeed,” she repeats thoughtfully, palm flirting with the hilt of her sword. It's a curious weapon, long and heavy with a wide, flat blade and a blunted tip; she wields it with perturbing ease, metal shimmering softly in her grip.

After a minute, she snaps her fingers.

“Aha! I remember now,” she crows. “Moralta. Yes, that was it. My name is Moralta.”

Ashe blinks. “You… you couldn’t remember, before?”

Moralta waves away his concern. “I cannot remember many things,” she says, unbothered. “It seems that most of those memories have been asleep for quite some time.”

“Oh,” Ashe says. “I think I know someone like that.”

“Do you, now?” Moralta grins, revealing a set of uncomfortably long and pointed canines. “Give them my regards, when you meet again. Perhaps we are not so different.”

_Christophe._ Christophe and Sana are nowhere to be seen.

“Lady Moralta,” Ashe starts, hesitant, “where are we?”

Moralta doesn’t have to think about this one. “Zanado, of course,” she says, and Ashe’s stomach does a little flip of surprise. “Though, it is not the city that I knew—and in that case, it is likely not the one that brought you here, either. It is most probably an echo, lost in the flow of time. Somewhere between death and a dream.”

Ashe doesn’t know how to phrase even half the questions he wants to ask about _that._ “Zanado was a city?” he repeats instead, feeling very slow and a little stupid.

Moralta nods. “Indeed. Zanado is where I was born, and Zanado is where I died.”

Ashe’s brow furrows. “You’re… dead,” he says.

He’s not sure what face he's making, but whatever it is, Moralta laughs, gentle as a spring breeze. “I have no need for your sorrow, little one,” she says. “I have been dead for a very long time.”

“Does that mean you’re a ghost?”

She pauses to consider, fingers drumming at the grip of her blade. “No, I do not think so. I am not sure that my kind was made to leave ghosts in the first place.”

Ashe is in the middle of mulling this over when a cold possibility strikes him.

“Then… am _I_ a ghost?” he ventures, reliving the bite of steel against his skin, the sound of his own scream echoing in his ears.

Moralta hesitates.

“Perhaps,” she says. “Your presence here is certainly solid enough for it. Give me your hand.”

Ashe isn’t sure what to expect, but he doesn’t think he has anything to lose, either, so he raises an arm and lets Moralta fold one of his hands in both of hers.

She breathes in.

At once, there’s a burst of light, so bright that Ashe has to look away—something warm rushes into his veins, tingling like faith magic, intense almost to the point of discomfort. It settles and sprawls within his body, spilling from him like the roots of some great tree, the way wild vines might swallow up the wood and stone of an entire building, left unchecked. The sensation mounts and mounts until Ashe is forced to rip his hands away, panting as the glow of Moralta’s magic fades.

_“What was that,”_ Ashe wheezes, fingers twitching, as if he’d just been firmly electrocuted and left out to dry.

Moralta looks pleased. “Well, I am fairly certain you are alive,” she says.

Ashe coughs.

“But, how intriguing!” She pulls Ashe to his feet without waiting for him to respond. “You carry none of our blood, none at all, and yet—tell me, little one. In your world of the living, are you able to converse with the dead?”

Ashe, fully dazed, can only nod. She nods back once, knowingly, as if this explains everything. “Let us go. There is something you must see.”

Moralta leads him up one of many empty streets, towards what must have been the center of Zanado, a long, long time ago. She walks quickly, with a stride that nearly equals two of his own. The path runs on an incline, and Ashe is hard-pressed to keep up.

“The very existence of ghosts is a strange phenomenon,” she tells him. “And so human, too. That you could share such collective faith in the ties that bind you, it could disrupt the flow of the world itself! Oh, so many of my brothers and sisters never trusted humans, not after the first time, but I always found you _fascinating—_ ”

Something in her face goes a little soft, a little sad. “Though I suppose I was proven wrong, in the end.”

Ashe pauses; Moralta doesn’t. He has to jog in order to catch up with her again.

“Lady Moralta,” he says.

“Your worry is wasted on me,” she says, suddenly quiet, no trace of anger or fear in her voice. Just a quiet, abiding sadness, a depth of acceptance that Ashe is far too scared to try to understand. “We are here.”

Ashe looks up.

Here, at the heart of the city, there sits an impossibly tall throne. It is cut from some kind of stone that he has never seen before; its faces are smoother than any natural wind- or water-worn rock should be. It stretches towards heaven, a stark gray monument against the distant clouds, empty as the look in Moralta’s eyes.

“I remember it now. I remember well.” She approaches the throne without hesitation, laying one slim hand on its surface. “For ten terrible weeks, humans laid siege to Zanado. I watched my brothers and sisters fall, one by one. They claimed the bones and hearts of our fiercest warriors for themselves.”

“I’m sorry,” Ashe says.

Moralta shakes her head. “It was no fault of yours, little one,” she says, faintly bemused. “I am sure that someone with a ghost heart like yours could never commit such a crime.”

She turns to him with one of her small, knowing smiles. “Besides, I did not bring you here to reminisce. I’d like you to sit on this throne, ghost-talker. There is someone I’d like you to try to speak with.”

“Someone you want me to speak with?” Ashe echoes, baffled.

“I do not know if you will be able to reach her,” Moralta confesses, sounding almost a little sheepish. “But I would be indebted to you, if you would try.”

Ashe sucks in a breath. “And all I have to do is sit on the throne?”

“Correct.”

“Then I’ll try it,” he declares.

A moment passes. Then, another.

The throne isn’t very comfortable.

“Do you hear anything?” Moralta asks hopefully.

Ashe shakes his head. Moralta sighs. She does not wear the disappointment on her face for long; instead, she climbs up the steps to join him, the two of them collectively taking up only a fraction of the space on the dais.

“It is what it is,” she says, unlatching the sword from her hip so that she can sit without smacking Ashe in the shins with it. “Thank you for trying, regardless.”

Her smile reminds him too much of Christophe’s. Ashe shakes his head again. “I’m sure I could try harder,” he suggests. “Maybe I could close my eyes, or—”

Moralta laughs. “That won’t be necessary,” she says. “Truly, I am content that you are here at all. I may not remember much, but even I can tell that it has been far too long since I last spoke with a living being.”

Ashe turns, curious. “Do you remember the last time?”

“Of course. I was Zanado’s final warrior,” she says. “I offered up my life in a duel with an enemy commander, so that young Seiros might escape to fight another day.” A chuckle, warm and bright. “Oh, she was _furious_ with me! To think that the last thing I ever told her was to run away.”

Ashe ponders all of this for a moment longer before something suddenly, violently clicks.

“Hold on,” he says slowly. “Did you say—did you say _Seiros?”_

Moralta looks puzzled. “Yes?”

“As in, Saint Seiros? Founder of the _Church of Seiros?”_ Ashe demands.

It’s hard to name all of the emotions that cross Moralta’s face, then. There’s curiosity at first, recognition. Wonder. Profound relief.

And then—there’s something that he can only describe as _delight,_ fervent laughter lit behind her eyes as she repeats, “The _Church_ of Seiros?”

“The Church of Seiros,” Ashe confirms, and tries not to show his alarm when Moralta slides off the throne with a very ungraceful cackle.

“That’s her, for sure,” she snorts, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. She turns back towards Ashe with a wide, genuine smile, her arm propped on the seat of the throne. “Little Seiros would never pass up an opportunity to name something after herself. Oh, stars. Mother would be so—”

Ashe reaches out a hand to pat her shoulder, but as he does, his vision crackles and blurs, his arm flickering. His fingers pass through Moralta’s body like water.

Moralta reaches up to hold his hand in much the same way as he holds the hands of his ghosts, an odd but not unpleasant buzzing sensation emanating from the places where their palms intersect.

“It looks like your time here is coming to an end, ghost-talker,” she says. “I am in your debt. To hear that, after everything, Seiros _won_ —it is more of a gift than you know.”

Ashe opens his mouth to say something, but it comes out in an unintelligible rush of static.

Moralta straightens up, short green hair tucked behind her pointed ears, and smiles. It is soft and benevolent, and once again Ashe feels like something very small in the face of something old and powerful and divine.

“Safe travels, little one,” she says.

The world spins once, twice, a thousand times.

Ashe wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time: conspiracy theories. bread baking. a change of pace.
> 
> as always, i'm @redamantian on twitter.


	5. earth and shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I—professor,” he says weakly. “I—I can’t just give up. I can’t stop here. There are still things I have to do.”
> 
> "There are different ways to help people,” Byleth says. “But you can’t help anyone if you’re dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Do good while people are alive; when each man dies  
>  He is earth and shadow. What is nothing changes nothing._
> 
> _τοὺς ζῶντας εὖ δρᾶν• κατθανὼν δὲ πᾶς ἀνὴρ  
>  γῆ καὶ σκιά• τὸ μηδὲν εἰς οὐδὲν ῥέπει._
> 
> _— Euripides, fr. 532_

It is an open secret at Garreg Mach that Manuela Casagranda is, twelve out of any given twenty-four hours in a day, drunk.

Ashe can tell, blinking blearily around the infirmary, that the rumors are—definitely not unfounded. The space around the beds is mostly clear, but the rest of the room radiates a very lived-in sort of chaos, and there are telltale bottles propped on just about every flat surface. They’re small, cheap, the kind mean to be swallowed in two gulps and smashed on the side of the street.

The physician herself, on the other hand, seems… normal. She’s sitting at her desk right now, a pair of old-fashioned glasses perched on her nose, quill in hand. Every so often, she reaches towards her overflowing shelves and pulls out a jar to check its contents, squinting and frowning before she scribbles something down and returns the jar to its place.

 _Inventory,_ Ashe realizes. He tries to sit up, but pain flares hot from his right shoulder all the way down his arm, and he falls back onto his pillow with a soft _thud._

“Oh, Ashe, honey,” Manuela says, looking up at the sound. “You’re awake—no, don’t move yet. I’ll grab you something for the pain.”

“Thank you,” Ashe croaks. His voice rattles in his throat, dry as a bone. The rest of his body feels as if it’s been stretched out like taffy and coiled back into shape.

Manuela disappears into some back room of the infirmary. The air thickens almost immediately, weighted like bright static on Ashe's skin. He blinks, trying to focus his eyes on the wavering form sitting at the foot of his bed.

Christophe doesn't look like Christophe. He barely even looks like a person. Ashe catches his eye; he takes a shuddering, visible breath.

"Thank the goddess," he says thickly, muffled into his palms. "You—I thought, for sure— _never_ do that to me again, Ashe."

"Christophe," Ashe whispers, and the flickering air begins to settle, to coalesce into something that looks just a bit more like his dead brother. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to make you—"

Manuela returns before he can say any more, a cup of water in one hand and a vial of viscous, murky green liquid in the other. She sets them both on the side table.

“Can you sit up?" she asks. "Here, give me your other hand.”

Ashe drags himself into a sitting position. With his good arm, he reaches for the vial, head cocked slightly.

“Those are both for you,” she says. “You can drink that one slowly, if you have to—but between you and me, it might go down easier if you get it all done in one shot.”

Ashe sniffs the vial. The contents might not look appetizing, but the smell isn’t that bad, strong and astringent with a bitter herbal edge. It can't be the worst thing he's ever tasted. He knocks the strange concoction back, gagging just a little at the texture, and washes it down gratefully with half the cup of water. Manuela hums approvingly as she whisks the now-empty vial away, setting it on one of the cluttered counters next to more of its kind.

Christophe stands, unsteady on his feet. “I’m gonna go find Sana and Avi,” he says. “Let them know you’re awake.”

“You should be grateful,” Manuela calls from the table. “All things considered, you were very lucky. The axe missed anything vital, and Mercedes was able to stabilize you on the way back to the monastery.”

Ashe looks down at his hands and shivers a little. The medicine’s aftertaste clings to his tongue, but the throbbing in his arm and chest is already starting to fade. “Mercedes is very talented,” he says.

Manuela pops the lid shut on one of the containers next to her inventory report. “You’re not wrong. Though I wouldn’t take that as permission to be reckless,” she warns. “The poor girl exhausted herself. Magic can only do so much, you know. A little bit to the left and I don’t think even I would’ve been able to save you.”

Ashe makes a mental note to thank Mercedes later. Maybe some cookies, he thinks. He’s passable at baking, even if Mercie herself is probably better at it.

“Did you heal me, too?” he asks, curious about the lingering ache in his shoulder, the bandages across his chest that are clearly not just for show.

Manuela laughs. “What do you think my job is, exactly?” she says. “I helped it along, but you still need to rest. White magic is—complicated. It’s not good to force the body to heal faster than it has to, if you can avoid it. You’ve already been out for about a day, and you’ll have some nasty scarring to boot, so I’d much rather you let the rest heal as naturally as you can over time.”

Ashe nods. Manuela seems grateful. “Good,” she says. “You have _no idea_ how many hotheads I’ve had to strong-arm back into their infirmary beds because they wouldn’t behave themselves.”

“Am I going to have to stay for very long?” Ashe asks, trying to sound like the prospect of missing even more class time stuck in a sickbed is _not_ very possibly the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

Manuela is not fooled for an instant. “Until the end of today, at least,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him. “But you seem pretty peppy already, so if you’re feeling up to it, I’ll heal you again tomorrow morning before I leave to teach my class, and we can go from there. How does that sound?”

Ashe sags a little in relief. “Good,” he says.

Manuela fusses with her stock for a few more minutes before heading out to run errands. Ashe nods along, meek and compliant, as she makes him promise to rest quietly.

No sooner has she closed the door than he hears a sharp, familiar voice.

 _“Ashe Duran,”_ Sana Molinaro says slowly, darkly, emerging from the wall directly next to his bed. She towers over him, arms crossed, glowering. “Or Ubert, or Gaspard, or whatever the fuck your last name is. I take my eyes off you for _one minute._ I follow my own baby brother into battle, thinking that you know how to handle yourself. And then I come back and I have to hear that you—”

Avi and Christophe float through the infirmary door, like civilized ghosts. Avi stifles a smile. “Sorry,” he mouths when Sana’s back is turned.

“—what do you have to say for yourself?”

Sana isn’t hard to read. Her concern is shaped like anger, but it’s still _concern,_ laid out plain as day. It leaves a thick and awful taste in his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Ashe says. It sounds weak even to his own ears. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

Christophe takes a seat at the foot of the bed again, quiet, flickering at the edges still. Sana stands with one hand propped on her hip. Avi hops right up onto the bed, nestling himself in the space next to Ashe’s left arm. It’s cold; if he closes his eyes, he can almost feel it, the slight press of solid weight against his shoulder.

“We’re not the only ones who were worried,” Sana says, which is the opposite of what Ashe wants to hear. “The dukeling took out that bandit the moment she had her axe in your chest. Your healer, the one with the pretty hair, she made sure you didn’t bleed to death on the spot. The professor struck down the commander, and the princeling wanted to carry you back—oh, but he was scared to hurt you more, so he gave you to Dedue.”

“Dodo brought you home,” Avi pipes up. “He stayed here for a while after he dropped you off, but Manuela made him leave because she didn’t want him to fall asleep in his chair.”

“I’m glad she did,” Ashe says, blinking. “I wouldn’t have wanted him to be uncomfortable because of me.”

Sana looks at him like she cannot believe the words that are coming out of his mouth. “He was _uncomfortable_ because you might have _died,_ stupid,” she snaps.

Ashe looks down at his hands.

“Ah,” he says. “You know, for a minute, I really did think I was—”

 _Dead._ He’d thought he was dead. Why had he thought that?

The memory comes back in fractured pieces, pointed ears and short green hair, mortal laughter on a divine face.

“—hold on. Wait. Christophe, I—I think I met someone,” Ashe says slowly. “While I was out."

He sits up a little straighter and explains it, the dream that wasn’t a dream. The story of Zanado, the throne at the heart of the city. Moralta, her memories and her magic, her connection to Saint Seiros.

Christophe chews at his lip thoughtfully. “I don’t know of anyone named Moralta in the scriptures,” he says. “You said she knew Seiros personally?”

Ashe nods. Sana leans against the wall and crosses her arms.

“I don’t know about you guys, but personally, I’m more interested in the part where she had pointy ears and monster teeth,” she says. “You said she wasn’t human, and she said _her kind_ didn’t leave ghosts. So what _was_ she?”

“There’s a legend,” Avi says suddenly. “Mama used to tell us about it all the time, Sana, do you remember? The one about the people with the pointy ears who turn into great winged lizards.”

Ashe turns to Sana, questioning. Sana confirms with a nod, eyes thoughtful.

Christophe leans back. “I’ve never heard of that—”

“It’s a Duscur myth, of course you’ve never heard—”

“—but do you know what I just realized?”

“What?”

 _“Lady Rhea,”_ Christophe says triumphantly. Ashe stares at him, puzzled. “Lady Rhea has green hair. And really, has anyone ever seen her ears?”

Ashe’s brow furrows. “Chris—”

“Think about it,” Christophe insists. “Seteth and his little sister, too. All of them have green hair, and all of them are heavily involved with the church, right? And here’s where it gets interesting… _no ears._ Not a single ear in sight—”

“Christophe,” Ashe interrupts, “are you trying to tell me that you think the Church of Seiros is run by _lizard people?”_

Avi hides his giggle behind his hands. Sana fails to contain her snort.

“Okay, Faerghans,” she tells them, unhitching herself from the wall and beckoning for Avi to join her. “You guys have fun with your conspiracy theories. Avi and I are going to make sure our brother doesn’t drive himself insane.”

Sana and Avi disappear into the hallway.

“I think it’s a good theory,” Christophe says.

Silence stretches across the empty infirmary. The tension snaps back into the air in an instant, thrumming electric in the space between them.

Ashe breathes in.

“I really am sorry for worrying you,” he says.

Christophe doesn’t respond right away. That's how Ashe knows he’s in trouble.

“I’m just grateful you’re still alive, sprout,” Christophe answers. He flickers, sending a low wash of static crackling throughout the room. “I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I had to watch you die.”

“At least you’d know how it happened,” Ashe mumbles, and then immediately shakes his head, eyes widening. “Ah, wait, I mean—I’m sorry, that was—”

Christophe sighs.

“Ashe,” he says, uncharacteristically serious. “I want you to be honest with me. If you want to keep pursuing this—this truth—for my sake, then I think you owe me that much.”

Ashe looks away, not trusting himself to meet Christophe’s eyes when he nods.

Christophe’s voice softens. “I don’t want to see you get hurt,” he says. “And I believe in you, I do. I believe in you more than anything else in the world. But I want you to ask yourself now: are you going to be able to handle being on a battlefield like that again? And again, and again? As many times as it takes for you to find what you’re looking for?”

Ashe stares down at the crisp beige infirmary sheets and swallows. He rolls all of the possible answers around in his mouth. He thinks about knighthood, about justice, about things left undone.

There are things about death that Christophe, who is dead, will readily understand. There are things about life that Christophe, who is no longer living, will never get the chance to comprehend again.

“No,” he says, quiet and scared and finally, finally truthful. “I don’t think I will be.”

Ashe is discharged from the infirmary the next afternoon with one arm in a sling, a packet of dry meds, and instructions to avoid overexerting himself for the next few days. His body feels heavy, drained from Manuela’s second round of healing, but he can move his right arm mostly without pain, and when he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the window, there’s the shiny edge of a new, deep scar cutting down his collarbone.

 _You can go to class as usual. You can even do light chores, though I doubt the professor will have you doing anything too strenuous,_ she’d said. _You’ll be able to take the sling off in a day or two. Just stay away from training and you should be completely fine by the end of the week._

Classes are already done for the day, so he scoops up his textbooks in his good arm and begins the trek from the dorms up to the library. With any luck, Annette will be there, and she’ll be in a good enough mood to fill him in on what he missed. Ashe shudders at the thought of having to make up two whole tactics lectures on his own.

On the way, though, he runs into the professor, who sticks out a hand to stop him from walking by without saying anything.

“Ashe,” they say. “I’d like to speak with you. Is now a good time?”

Ashe gets the sinking feeling that he knows exactly what they want to talk about. “Um,” he hedges, eyes darting from corner to corner, looking for an escape. “I’m—”

“Beansprout,” Christophe says, reproachful. He places a hand on the back of Ashe’s neck. The cold makes him yelp. “You go to _military school._ There is no running away from this one. Talk to your professor.”

“Yeah,” Ashe says, defeated. “Yeah, now is fine.”

Byleth leads Ashe into one of the several small courtyards at the heart of the monastery. It’s a warm, pleasant day, and every once in a while students call out to the professor with a smile and a wave, not seeming to mind that they never smile back. The steady hum of voices around them, living and dead alike, settles Ashe’s nerves. They come to a halt near one of the little tables next to the gazebo; it’s already set with a modest teapot and two cups, a small tray of snacks with a pot of sugar cubes propped up against it.

“You made—you made tea?” Ashe stumbles over the words in surprise.

Byleth nods. “I have learned recently that it is good for creating a safe and engaging environment for conversation,” they say. “And I would like for my students to feel like they can talk to me.”

Ashe stares at the carefully set table—at his strange professor, who never needs to blink and knows how to catch fish in their bare hands but has apparently just learned what a _tea party_ is—and feels something inside of him relax, just a little.

He sits with his hands folded politely on the table in front of him and watches them rearrange the biscuits. When he makes a motion to pour the tea, Byleth waves his hand away. “I’m your host,” they say, almost a little petulant, and Ashe nearly laughs out loud. The brew they pour is a pale gold in color, and the smell punches Ashe in the nose before he even lifts the cup to his lips.

“Is this mint?” he asks, and the professor nods. “Oh, I love this kind! Wild mint grows everywhere in my hometown. My mother always used to brew a cup before bed.”

Byleth doesn’t smile—Byleth rarely smiles, and when they do, it always comes out sort of wrong—but there’s a tiny bit of warmth in their eyes as they stir sugar into their own cup and take a sip. “I am… not very well-versed in tea. I picked it at random,” they admit. “It is good to know that you like it, though.”

Ashe sets his cup down and reaches for a biscuit. They’re light and crunchy, if a bit misshapen. If he had to guess, they’re probably a batch from the kitchens that turned out a little too odd to serve to the students. It’s fitting they should end up here.

“Well, I’m not very picky,” he says, because it’s true. “There’s mint everywhere in Gaspard, and my father used to brew angelica to help with stomach problems, but I don’t know much about tea, either.”

Byleth nods, stirring another lump of sugar into their cup. They break off a piece of biscuit and plunge the whole thing into their drink. Ashe wonders, absently, if the professor has a sweet tooth.

They sit for a little while without speaking, sipping tea and eating snacks and listening to the chatter of students walking by.

“So,” Byleth says. “About the mission—”

“I’m sorry,” Ashe blurts.

Byleth blinks. “For what?”

Ashe stares down at the lumpy edges of the biscuit in his hand, suddenly unable to meet Byleth’s piercing gaze. “For… for getting hurt,” he says. “I hesitated when I couldn’t afford to. Someone else could’ve gotten hurt because of me—”

Byleth frowns, a tiny little thing. It stops him dead in his tracks.

“I’m not angry that you got hurt,” they say. “I’m your teacher, Ashe. It was my responsibility to keep you safe. I should have noticed that something was wrong. If anything, I should be the one apologizing to you.”

Ashe is stunned into silence.

“So I hope,” Byleth continues, “that you’ll talk to me about what happened, and what you need from me. That way, we can make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

Something hot pricks at the back of his eyes.

“It was the bandits,” Ashe says, before he can cut himself off, and once the words start coming he’s not sure if he can physically stop them. “I couldn’t stop—thinking about the bandits. I didn’t want to kill them. I don’t—I don’t think that any of those people were in that canyon because they _wanted_ to hurt people, or because they were _evil,_ or—did you see their faces, professor? Did you see them? Most of them just looked… scared.”

The professor looks thoughtful. “I’d never thought of it like that,” they say, and Ashe remembers belatedly that the Ashen Demon of bardic legend probably would not have qualms about killing people, actually. “They did want to hurt you, though, Ashe. They _did_ hurt you.” Byleth gestures at his sling.

Ashe makes a frustrated noise. “It’s not the same,” he says. “We—we attacked them.”

Byleth doesn’t blink. “They had attacked many others,” they reply. “If we hadn’t intervened, they likely would have continued. Isn’t it better that we put a stop to them now?”

“That’s—” Ashe shakes his head, watching a biscuit dissolve in his tea. “N-no. I mean, no, you’re probably right. It just… something about it doesn’t sit right with me.”

Byleth fishes something soggy out of their cup with the sugar spoon.

“Professor, I…” Ashe hesitates. “In Faerghus, knighthood is seen as the pinnacle of justice. Knights are good people, people who eliminate corruption and uphold society’s ideals. I-I always wanted to become one, you know. That’s why I’m here.”

It’s not the entire truth, but it’s not a lie. He sucks in a breath. “I’m not—stupid. I always knew this was part of the job, even if they never talk about it in the books. But—” Brilliant, haunted blue eyes flash behind his eyelids. “—I wanted to be able to help people. I wanted to protect them. And I don’t… I don’t think that what we did in that canyon was the right way to do it.”

Byleth regards him with mild eyes. “Doesn’t protecting people mean that you’ll also have to hurt the people you’re protecting them from?” they ask. “If that same group of bandits had been raiding a village, and our class had been called out to defend the villagers—would you have been willing to kill them then, for causing harm to those you’d pledged to protect?”

Ashe turns the problem over in his head for a minute.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know. I’d want to ask—why did they decide to raid the village at all? What made them feel like that was their best option? I’m sure that there are selfish, awful people in this world, but... there are just too many of them, professor. Too many bandits in Fodlan. People don’t take those jobs for—for fun. People take those jobs because they’re _jobs.”_

He's clutching the cup so tightly he's afraid it might shatter in his hands. “And even if they are horrible and evil and live only to hurt other people—what right do I have to end their life over it? To—to steal away every chance they’ll ever have to change?” Ashe’s voice sharpens. “As long as you’re alive, you can always choose to be better. But once you’re dead, you’re _dead!_ Even if you come back, you can’t change anything!”

Some of the other students in the courtyard are beginning to stare. Ashe ducks his head, cheeks hot.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, mortified. “All of that sounds… pretty naive, doesn't it?”

The professor takes a minute to stare back at the students in the gazebo. The students giggle for an uncomfortable moment before they turn their gazes elsewhere. Then, they turn back to Ashe, inscrutable as ever.

“Maybe,” Byleth says. “But it’s also very kind.”

Ashe stares at his tea. The biscuit is gone, now. It’s a pile of mushy crumbs at the bottom of his cup.

“Ashe.” The professor’s voice is soft, kind in its own right. “You’re looking for something. I can see that much. But what is it that you want to protect _right now?_ Is this path one that will let you do that, and stay true to yourself?”

Something constricts in Ashe’s throat. “I—professor,” he says weakly. “I—I can’t just give up. I can’t stop here. There are still things I have to do.”

“I’m not asking you to. There are different ways to help people,” Byleth says. “But you can’t help anyone if you’re dead.”

Ashe swirls the tea at the bottom of his cup. The crumbs float to the top for just a moment before they sink once more, slowly, settling like snow.

“I’ll… I’ll think about it,” he says.

The kitchen is surprisingly tough to navigate in a sling.

“Ashe,” Sana says, looking vaguely pained as he tries to mix bread dough with his non-dominant hand. It’s a clumsy, messy endeavor, but he’s getting there. Somehow. “You help with prep every week. Everyone who works in this kitchen would die for you. Just ask someone to help you out.”

The room isn’t quite empty, but this stretch of countertop is, and there’s enough ambient noise for Ashe to get away with talking out loud. “Ah, but I’m making it as a thank-you,” he says, scrunching his nose. “If I let someone else do all the work, what’s the point?”

Sana hops onto the countertop and watches as Ashe accidentally flicks flour over the edge of the bowl. “I’m just saying,” she grumbles. “Not much of a point if it takes you five years to make, either.”

Ashe frowns and tosses the spoon into a washbasin, mashing the remaining flour in with his fingers. “It won’t take five years to make,” he argues. “This is the worst part. Everything else should be easy.”

“I have no faith in you,” Sana says.

Ashe pats the ball of dough with his palm. “You’ll see,” he tells her. “When it’s done.”

“So, in five years, then.”

Christophe barks out a laugh. “I’d wait five years to be able to taste Ashe’s baking again,” he says wistfully, reaching for the bowl.

“Really?”

“He’s exaggerating,” Ashe says. “I’m nothing special. My little brother is much be—Christophe, stop putting your hands in my dough.”

“I’m not touching it! I _can’t_ touch it,” Christophe protests.

“It’s not even cooked! Raw dough is bad for you!”

“Oh, scary. What’s it gonna do, kill me?”

“That’s not the _point—”_

Sana’s gaze flickers somewhere just past Ashe’s shoulder. “Ashe, incoming.”

“I thought you were supposed to be resting,” a voice behind him says.

Ashe turns and finds himself face to face with Dedue, who is looking down at him with an expression that he can’t interpret. His arms are crossed, eyebrows raised just slightly. If he’s noticed Ashe’s mumbling, he keeps his comments to himself.

“I am resting,” Ashe says brightly. “Professor Manuela said it was okay for me to do light chores, as long as I don’t strain my right side too much.”

“I see,” Dedue says. Thankfully, and perhaps entirely for Ashe’s sake, he doesn’t press the issue. Instead, Dedue slips past him to grab an apron from the back wall. “What are you baking?”

“Bread,” Ashe answers, flexing his fingers. “I was thinking about baking thank-you cookies for Mercedes. But then I figured, if I was going to do that, I should really make something for everyone! But Felix doesn’t like sweets, so I thought it might be best to make something everybody can enjoy…”

Dedue nods, eyes fixed on Ashe’s hand, still nearly wrist-deep in his bowl.

“Do you… need help?” he asks.

Ashe shakes his head. “No, I’m alright,” he says. The dough makes a faint, sticky noise as he pulls his hand free. “What about you, Dedue? What brings you to the kitchen?”

“Nothing of importance,” Dedue says. There’s a slight, stilted pause. Then, a little too quickly: “Forgive me for saying so, Ashe, but you look… tired. Why not leave the bread with me? I will call you when it is ready to bake.”

Sana pokes Ashe in his good shoulder.

“He’s lying,” she says in a singsong voice. “I mean—he’s not wrong, you look like shit, but he’s definitely lying. He talks faster when he lies.”

Ashe, intrigued, turns to Dedue and shakes his head.

“I feel perfectly fine,” he says, with wide, pleading eyes. “Whatever it is, please, let me help! The dough has to rise for a little while, anyway, so if you need an extra pair of hands—or, ah, hand, I guess—”

Dedue meets his gaze for a very impressive number of seconds before acquiescing.

As it turns out, Dedue is making soup, which genuinely does involve a lot of things that Ashe is not sure he can do without the use of his right arm. Still, he helps out where he can, keeping an eye on the pot and measuring out ingredients so that Dedue can focus on chopping vegetables. The motions are simple, familiar. Settling.

Ashe smashes a clove of garlic with the heel of his palm. “This reminds me of working in the restaurant,” he says. “Before I was old enough to use a knife.”

Dedue slides a pile of chopped carrots towards him. “You are quite skilled with them now,” he says, reaching for his next batch of vegetables. The flesh of the verona makes a crisp, satisfying sound with every slice. “How old were you when you learned?”

Ashe thinks. “I was… four?” he says, and laughs when Dedue stops chopping altogether. “Oh, stop, that’s not that young! Most kids in Faerghus already know how to swing a sword by then. My mother had just had twins, and I wanted to help out more around the house, since she was always so busy.”

“Ah,” Dedue says. “Your father taught you?”

“He didn’t want to, at first! But after he found me trying to fillet a trout on my own, and after he was done being angry about it, he sat me down and promised to teach me properly.” Ashe smiles and dumps the carrots into the pot. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be half the chef that my father was. I’d bet he could figure out a way to chop vegetables one-handed in no time.”

“Then it is a good thing you do not have to,” Dedue says.

He turns his back to Ashe as he moves onto the chicken, dicing up the breast into smaller, bite-sized chunks. For a moment, the kitchen falls quiet, bathed in amicable silence. Ashe has an idea.

Dedue adds the chicken back to the pot with a small splash. “In all truth,” he starts, “I am grateful for your assistance, but you do not… have to help… at all…”

He trails off as he turns around to find Ashe standing on a chair, nose buried in the spice cabinet, a line of small bottles already laid out on the countertop.

Ashe pulls his head out and grins. “Any suggestions?” he asks, teetering a little.

Dedue stares.

“The Saints’ blend,” he says after a long, heavy pause. “Might work well. With those flavors. There is some in the tea cabinet. Please let me get it for you.”

“No, no, I can do it,” Ashe says, already turning around. He really should move the chair, he thinks, but if he stands on his toes and stretches—

Ashe barely registers the warmth of Dedue’s hands on his hips before he realizes that his feet are no longer on the chair. And then he is standing next to the counter again, and Dedue is grabbing the spice bottle and seasoning the soup like nothing has happened at all.

Sana is doubled over laughing. Ashe balks. “Did you just _pick me up?”_

“My apologies,” Dedue says, faintly pink. “It is just—you cannot hurt yourself again before dinner. That would defeat the purpose.”

Ashe crosses his arms. “The purpose of what, exactly?”

There’s a crash in the doorway. Ashe sees Annette before he hears her, stopped in a patch of sunlight, gesticulating wildly and mostly ignoring the barrel she knocked over on the way in. “Dedue, have you seen Ashe? I know you’ve been busy getting dinner ready, but I can’t find him any—wait, he’s here already? You guys didn’t start without me, did you?”

“Annette,” Dedue says, “no one else is here yet.”

“Oh,” Annette says. Then, she props her hands on her hips and points straight at Ashe and shouts, “You! Why are you making your own surprise dinner!”

Ashe opens his mouth.

“Annie, why are you shouting?” Mercedes’ head pops into view by the doorframe, looking only the smallest bit concerned. She steps delicately around the barrel on the floor. “Is something wrong? Oh, hello, Ashe.”

“Hello,” Ashe says feebly.

“Alright, who’s in charge of finding Ashe?” Ingrid’s voice floats in from the hall. She appears in the doorway seconds later, hauling Felix by the vest. Ingrid’s braid is messy and Felix’s bun is nearly falling out, dirt patches fresh on the elbows and knees of both their uniforms. “I’m starving, but we can’t very well start without him.”

“All you ever think of is food,” Felix complains, trying and failing to twist himself out of her grasp. “If he’s not even here yet, I’m going back to train.”

“Oh _no_ you don’t, Fraldarius, we said we’d all have dinner together—”

Dimitri, standing awkwardly next to Sylvain in the hallway behind them, says, “Actually, Felix, I think he’s here already.”

Felix whirls. “Boar, did I _ask?”_

“Dedue,” Ashe whispers, pulling the cover off his bowl of bread dough and punching it gently into a loaf as chatter fills the kitchen, “what’s going on, exactly?”

“This was… supposed to be a surprise,” he says. “It was Annette’s idea. After what happened at Zanado, she thought you might need a little cheering up, and everyone else agreed that it might be nice to share a meal in celebration of all of us returning safely.”

Ashe shakes his head. "But you didn't need to—"

Near the doorway, Sylvain has said something stupid in an effort to defuse Felix. Near Sylvain, Mercedes is saying something much less stupid, in an effort to cancel out the fact that Sylvain has only succeeded in redirecting the fight to himself.

Dedue pulls the soup off the stove and begins to ladle it into bowls.

"We care about you, Ashe," he says, like it's the most obvious truth in the world.

Ashe stares at the uncooked loaf of bread under his hand.

Byleth’s voice echoes in his ears.

_What is it that you want to protect?_

In that moment, he realizes—the answer is right in front of him.

“Professor,” he says, a few days later, “I think I’d like to start taking faith classes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise! early update this week. birthday present to myself, but also to you.
> 
> ON FANART:  
> \- this is many months overdue, but @laperclip drew the molinaro siblings!!! but the fic was on hiatus at the time, so i never had the chance to post it with an update. i'm fixing that now! [go look at them!](https://twitter.com/laperclip/status/1221908698374606848?s=20)  
> \- @areseliph drew an AMAZING [sana](https://twitter.com/areseliph/status/1296302480939081728?s=20) as a bday gift :}
> 
> ON LINKS:  
> \- if you want to rt this fic, you can find it on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/redamantian/status/1296318157423087617?s=20)!
> 
> next time: a study break. a cathedral break-in. conversations on care, intent, and what it truly means to protect.


	6. ghost on the stairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know,” Mercedes says, “if you find yourself talking to the plants, that usually means it’s time to take a break.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _i’ve been longing for  
>  daisies to push through the floor  
> and i wish plant life would grow all around me  
> so i won’t feel dead anymore_
> 
> _— Adam Young, “Plant Life”_

“—so, if our aim is to consistently maximize the number of targets hit, you’ll want to change the ballista’s trajectory to account for the enemy’s rate of advance from the—Ashe, are you even listening?”

Ashe jumps a little. “Sorry,” he says, contrite, shoving the crumpled letter in his hands towards the far corner of the table. He’s folded it and unfolded it so many times he’s pretty sure he’s accidentally memorized its contents. The same cannot be said for his siege methods worksheet—it sits abandoned on the desk in front of him, mostly blank, a tall stick figure with a long braid doodled in the margins. “Would—would you mind repeating that? I’ll pay attention this time, I swear.”

Annette sighs, closing her textbook with a dull clap. When she shifts in her seat to face him fully, her hair catches the light spilling through the library window, turned fiery in the glow of the late afternoon sun.

“We’re taking a break,” she says, in a tone that brooks no argument.

For once, there are no ghosts around to comment. Sana and Avi are down at the marketplace with Dedue, and Christophe always gets bored when he spends too much time studying. Today it’s just Ashe, and Annette, and a bunch of dead librarians who keep shushing them at random intervals.

It’s—strange. His thoughts feel too loud without a constant stream of chatter to drown them out.

He’s quiet as Annette pushes her textbook to one side, her notes to the other. Once the papers are out of the way, she flips her worksheet over, making sure that the questions are no longer visible.

“Have you eaten today?” she asks, reaching over to cap the inkwell sitting on the table between them.

Ashe considers. “Maybe?”

Annette scrunches her brow until it is the texture of cabbage. “What do you mean, _maybe?”_

“I hadn’t really thought about it until now,” Ashe says, a little defensive, unable to keep himself from glancing at the letter at the edge of the desk again. The back of his neck prickles. “I guess I’ve had other things on my mind.”

“Well, maybe that’s why you keep spacing out!” An accusation, but there’s no heat to it. “Okay, hold on, don’t say anything. I’ve got snacks in here somewhere.”

Ashe opens his mouth to—to protest that it’s fine, to refuse a kindness he doesn’t need, but—nope, Annette is already halfway under the table.

After a few minutes of suspicious rustling, she emerges, pulling a myriad of small wrapped packages from a bag that looks entirely too large to have fit inside her satchel in the first place. “Let’s see. We’ve got sweet buns from the dining hall, pastries from that shop the gatekeeper likes… those biscuits I made with the professor a few days ago—oh, the candy is free, take as much as you want. Just don’t touch the honeycombs, those are—”

“—yours,” Ashe finishes, blinking owlishly at the array of sweets scattered across the desk. “Annette, I’m—grateful, I am, and I don’t mean to sound rude, but do you just—carry this stuff around with you?”

“Of course,” Annette says, like this is a stupid question. She unwraps one of the candies and pops it into her mouth. It clacks a little against her teeth as she talks. “You never know when you’ll need a sweet treat, right?”

There’s a slight pause before she adds, “Also, between you and me, Mercie’s even worse than you are. Sometimes she forgets to eat for _days.”_

Ashe picks up one of the sweet buns and takes a bite. It’s chewy, a little stale, but still perfectly edible. “Huh,” he says. “I never would’ve guessed.”

Then, the full sentence catches up with him: “H-hey, wait, I’m not that bad!”

“Oh, yeah?” Annette flicks a candy wrapper across the table. “Then why have you spent the past three hours trying to read that letter instead of studying?”

Ashe freezes around his sweet bun.

“Uh,” he mumbles around a mouthful of half-stale bread. “Um.”

Annette cackles as he chews.

“It’s fine,” she assures him, a preemptive strike against the apology on the tip of his tongue. Her eyes are bright and blue and full of mirth. “I knew you were thinking about something else the entire time.”

Something like anxiety crawls into the space between his ribs. It must show on his face, because Annette’s expression softens. “Hey, hey! I don’t mind, Ashe, I promise. I was just curious!”

Ashe sets the bun down and shakes his head. After what feels like an eternity, he reaches across the desk to unfold the letter once more. It sits there, unassuming, creased and smudged in the afternoon sun. He doesn’t read it, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s had the whole thing memorized for hours.

_Dearest brother,_ it starts, _we’re glad to hear that you’ve been well—_

“It’s from my siblings,” he says, eyes fixed on row after row of Cole’s meticulous script, Violet’s messy scrawl. “I’ve been thinking about how to respond all day.”

There’s a long pause.

“I…” Annette presses her lips together in a sheepish line. “I don’t get it.”

“That’s okay,” he says, not really _wanting_ her to get it, but Annette shakes her head right back at him.

“It’s obviously bothering you,” she insists, leaning forward in her chair with rounded eyes. “So I wanna help! Um, if that’s okay.”

Ashe isn’t sure if he’s touched by the gesture or terrified of trying to explain the problem. He exhales, a short huff that sends dust motes swirling in the air in front of him. “Ah, I’m not… I mean, it’s…”

He buries his face in his hands in frustration. “I want to reply, but I don’t know what to say.”

Annette makes a little humming sound. Ashe sneaks a peek through his fingers. The look in her eyes is the same one she gets when she’s working through a particularly tough math problem.

“Well, when was the last time you wrote to them?” she asks.

Ashe drops his hands into his lap and frowns. “About… two weeks ago?”

Annette presses her knuckles to her cheek, deep in thought. Then, all at once, she brightens. “So it was before the last mission, right?”

_Yeah, how was the last mission?_ the letter echoes from its place on the table, almost mocking. _Was it exciting? Was it scary?_

_Did you feel like a real knight?_

“Right,” he says, trying very hard not to think about knights and bandits and dead men with holes through their hearts. His voice sounds a bit strained, even to his own ears. Annette doesn’t seem to notice. If anything, she seems too caught up in fixing Ashe’s problem to notice that she is rapidly becoming part of it.

“Then that’s perfect,” she exclaims. “You can write about Zanado!”

This would be a good idea, if not for the fact that it is the exact thing that he has been trying to avoid thinking about all day. “I… don’t think I can,” he mumbles.

Annette blinks. “Why not?”

“I—”

He doesn’t want to talk about it. 

“You’ve got tons to talk about—”

“I don’t think I can,” Ashe repeats, louder.

He sucks in a breath, trying to find the right words. “You… you saw what happened at Zanado. I’m lucky I’m not dead. I know that. Everyone knows that. But I—” His fingers curl instinctively into his palms, fists balled up in his lap. “I can’t _tell them_ that, Annette. I’m all they’ve got. I always have been.”

His voice grows thin, pressed behind his teeth. “So I won’t tell them anything. I don’t need to make them worry. And they don’t need to know.”

Silence.

When he looks back up, Annette’s smile is gone. In its place sits something uncertain—something uncomfortably close to hurt.

There’s a sickly, sudden gravity that expands in the space between them. There’s a fear in her eyes that mirrors the tightness in his own chest.

“Ashe,” she says quietly, “that’s not fair.”

In retrospect, his next question is a mistake. He could’ve dropped the subject. He should’ve just apologized. But he won’t know this until after the fact, won’t see the shot until the arrow’s left his hand, won’t realize that his mouth is moving until Annette’s eyes have already gone huge:

“Why not?”

“Why _not?”_ she repeats, incredulous. She sits a bit straighter in her seat, steel in her spine, something curiously raw in her voice. It burns brighter with every word that falls from her mouth. “Because—they’d want to know if you got hurt? Because they _care_ about you?”

“I-I care about them,” Ashe shoots back, scrambling to understand her anger, trying to outpace the argument rapidly souring on his tongue. “But what’s the point in telling them? What’s the point in making them worry over something they can’t control?”

Annette shakes her head, sharp and splintered. “The point,” she spits, “is that it’s worse to keep it from them. The point is that it’s worse to _lie—”_

_Don’t let them know,_ whispers a younger Ashe, buried somewhere in the space between his bones, a loaf of stolen bread clutched to his chest. _You can’t ever let them know._

His hands feel cold, but they’re oddly steady. “I’m not lying,” he says, low and unfamiliar in his throat. “They’re happier not knowing. I’m doing what’s best for them.”

“But how can you be so _sure?”_ One of the ghosts at the next table over jumps at Annette’s sudden shout. “That’s not something you get to decide! Think about how they’d feel if—you left them behind, and you never came back. Think about how they’d feel, not—not knowing if you were okay—”

Ashe can barely hear anything over the blood roaring in his ears.

_You don’t know what it’s like,_ he thinks hazily, awfully. _You’ve never had to protect anything._

For a moment, Annette genuinely looks like she’s about to hit him, color high in her cheeks, small fists clenched at her sides. For a few terrifying seconds, he wonders if he’s accidentally spoken his thoughts out loud. But Annette isn’t looking at him; she’s looking past him, _through_ him, as if she’s seeing the ghost of someone else’s face.

Somewhere, dimly, Ashe becomes aware of the fact that he’s missing something very important.

“Children,” Tomas’ voice filters in from somewhere behind him, weary, “if you must do this, I’d recommend that you take it somewhere that _isn’t_ my library—”

Annette isn’t looking at him at all, anymore. Annette is looking like she is trying very hard not to cry.

The fight drains out of him in an instant. Ashe swallows hard, hollow, letter troubles all but forgotten. “Annette—”

“Fine,” she says shortly, slinging her backpack over her shoulder, leaving the sweets scattered across the tabletop. “You win, jerk. You don’t have to tell them anything.”

She’s gone before he has the chance to say anything. The air feels thinner in the wake of her departure.

It’s—too quiet, he thinks.

It almost hurts to breathe.

“—wait, you want me to _what?”_

He’s being too loud for the monastery grounds at three o’clock in the morning, but Ashe can’t find it in himself to care. The knights don’t usually make rounds on this side of the bridge after midnight, and Christophe drops the suggestion so casually that it doesn’t even process in his brain until after he’s already agreed to it.

Christophe crosses his arms and leans back against the railing, silvered and ethereal. “I said,” he repeats, raising an eyebrow, “you should just break into the cathedral to pray. Watching you pace around out here is making me dizzy.”

It’s been a few days since Ashe and Annette fought in the library. They haven’t spoken since, which has been terrible for Ashe’s grades and even worse for his conscience. He hasn’t shared any of the details with Christophe, but he’s sure he knows—whether it's through the power of brotherly intuition, or simply the fact that Ashe has only slept about three hours in the past forty-eight.

“Why?” he demands.

“It’ll make you feel better,” Christophe says, which he hates because it’s probably true. Ashe has always liked cathedrals. His parents had been devout believers, as had Lonato and Christophe after them. They’re good places, safe places. “And if you won’t tell _me_ what happened, you can at least let the goddess know, and maybe then you’ll finally be able to go the fuck to sleep.”

Christophe’s outline is starting to swim in the moonlight. Ashe rubs at his eyes.

“The cathedral’s locked,” he argues.

“Since when has that ever stopped you?”

“I don’t even have a pick!”

“Look me in the eye and tell me you can’t make one out of something that’s in your pockets right now.”

“I can’t...” Ashe’s mumble dies out as he breaks eye contact, peering into the soft, unyielding darkness of the valley below the bridge instead. “Ugh. Fine.”

Christophe looks pleased with himself.

As it turns out, Ashe doesn’t even need a lockpick. The cathedral may be diligently locked at the start of every evening, but it’s also very old, full of gaps and cracks and places for a clever, surefooted boy to find a path inside. He drops almost silently onto the flagstone, footsteps light as he makes his way up the rows of pews towards the front of the room.

Ashe isn’t sure how he feels about the goddess, not really. She exists, or she doesn’t. She cares about the hopes and dreams of humankind, or she doesn’t. He supposes he might have had an easier time of figuring it out in a world where he never knew the restless dead—but still, he’s always liked religion as a story, and there’s something he likes about these holy places that he can’t quite bring himself to name.

“Hello,” he says to the statues of the four saints as he approaches their pedestals, squinting a little in the dim light of half-spent devotional candles. “Oh—it’s a bit of a mess in here, isn’t it?”

There’s various bits of rubble strewn across the floor, remnants of old offerings that nobody’s swept away yet. Ashe stoops in front of Saint Indech, picking up one of the moldy oranges sitting at the base of his statue. He wrinkles his nose before he tosses it in the small refuse bin just outside the saints’ alcove. “I came here to pray, but let’s get you all cleaned up a little, first.”

Christophe watches quietly as he picks up trash and relights the candles that have burnt out over the course of the night. Ashe doesn’t want to admit it, but this helps, too—the feeling of being useful, the feeling of being able to serve something larger than himself. It’s settling, centering. For the first time in a few days, he can feel himself finally start to relax.

Which is why, maybe, he doesn’t notice the footsteps until their owner is already standing in the doorway.

“H-halt! Who’s there?”

Ashe is lucky that he’s not holding a candle. As it stands, he drops a carved metal sigil of the Crest of Macuil. It hits the ground with a thunderous clatter that makes both him and the stranger jump.

_A ghost,_ his mind supplies automatically—except then there’s something suspiciously boot-shaped flying at him, and he barely has time to amend his assessment to _not a ghost_ before the shoe knocks into Saint Cethleann’s carefully-laid tray of offerings, sending it all crashing to the ground.

“Wait!” he yelps, glancing between the silhouette and the offerings scattered across the floor. “I-I’m just a student, I swear!”

The figure in the doorway pauses.

“A student?” she repeats. “What business would an academy student have here?”

Ashe sucks in a breath. “I came here to pray,” he says. “I just wanted to clean up a little beforehand."

The figure moves further into the candlelight, just far enough for him to make out her face. His second thought is that she looks _young,_ clad in an academy uniform old-fashioned enough to lend credence to the thought that she might just be another ghost after all; she’s definitely missing a shoe, though, and when he nudges the boot on the ground with his foot, it’s unmistakably solid.

His first thought is that her hair is a shocking shade of mint green.

“Oh,” she says, softer, taking in the sight of him with his hands still raised, sticks of incense and fruit and wooden toys rolling around on the floor. “Oh, dear. I’ve made a mistake, haven’t I?”

“She threw her _shoe_ at you,” says Christophe, who seems to find this both charming and hilarious. Ashe kneels to pick up said shoe and offers it wordlessly to the girl, who flushes a little pink before she jams it back onto her foot.

“It’s no problem at all,” he assures her. “What are you doing in the cathedral so late at night?”

She pauses her assessment of the damage to the saints’ offerings and turns to him with a cross little huff. “I could ask you the same, sir student,” she says.

Ashe laughs a little at that. “I suppose that’s fair,” he answers.  He doesn’t offer an explanation, and the girl doesn’t press him for one. He decides that he likes her immediately. “A-anyway, I’m Ashe! It’s nice to meet you.”

The girl offers him a little curtsy, a pleased dip of her head. “Oh! My name is Flayn—”

“Seteth’s little sister,” Christophe interjects.

“—it is nice to meet you as well! …though I fear I must apologize for the boot.”

Ashe picks one of the apples off the floor with a smile. “Please don’t worry about it,” he says. “If anything, I’m sorry I didn’t manage to catch it. I’m sure Saint Cethleann isn’t too happy with me right now.”

Flayn hides a giggle behind her hand. “I am sure that she could find it in her heart to forgive you,” she says, kneeling to examine one of the little fish-shaped toys. “Please, allow me to help. It is the least I can do after startling you so rudely.”

The work goes a little faster, after that. Flayn knows exactly how to set the offerings out in their original positions, which closet holds the right broom to sweep out the corners, where the staff keeps the flint to light their fires. It’s impressive, if not perplexing. For a child, she seems to know an awful lot about the Church.

She talks and talks as they relight candles and pick fruit up off the floor, mostly about herself. Her favorite fruit is apples, she says. Her favorite saint is Cethleann. She was born in Enbarr, but she hasn’t been back since.

He can’t help but notice that she speaks in the overjoyed rush of someone who has not had anyone to talk to in a long, long time.

“Is there something you require?” she asks when she notices him staring.

Ashe startles. “No, no,” he says, shoving the broom in his hands back against the wall. A cloud of dust puffs from the spot where it hits the ground. It makes him sneeze. “I was just—I was just thinking. I haven’t seen you around before, have I?”

“Likely not,” she says. “My brother and Lady Rhea prefer that I stay close at their sides. I know the face of every knight and student at Garreg Mach, but there are not many I’ve had the honor of speaking with.”

Ashe looks at her uniform again, confused. “But—I thought you were an academy student?”

Flayn’s eyes widen. “Is that what you thought?”

A beat. It stretches long enough that Ashe starts to wonder if he should apologize.

Flayn claps her hands together.

“That would be a delight, if it were true!” she sighs, soft and starry-eyed. “I am not, though I am flattered that you would assume. In truth, I would love nothing more than to study alongside my peers—to learn under a professor’s watchful eye, to forge lasting bonds with others… oh, it is a most romantic thought, is it not?”

It isn’t, not really, but Flayn says it with such ardor that he can almost believe her.

“So why don’t you?” he asks.

Her face falls.  Ashe backtracks. “S-sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“No, it’s alright,” Flayn says, small but firm. "It is just..."

She pauses for a moment, deep in thought. “My brother is a cautious man. And I love him very much, and of course I am grateful for what he has done for me. But I do believe that sometimes he has trouble imagining that we are safe enough here to let me live freely."

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“A little,” Flayn admits. “Though, try as I might, I cannot truly hold it against him. He is only doing what he thinks is best for me.”

Something uncomfortable lodges itself in Ashe's throat.

Flayn sets the last of the scattered offerings onto Saint Cichol’s pedestal, plucking the broom from his hands to sweep up the last of the debris.  “But that is quite enough of that,” she says, shaking off the subject like a dog shaking off water. “You said you came here to pray, did you not?”

Ashe wrenches himself away from his thoughts. “I don’t need to,” he says quickly. “If you wanted to stay—”

Flayn waves him away. “Nonsense. It is getting late,” she says. “I will leave you to it.”

Then, hopeful: “Though, if you wanted to come back again next week…”

Ashe is nodding before she’s even finished her sentence. “Of course,” he says. “Of course. I’ll be back. I promise.”

Flayn smiles.

“I look forward to it,” she says.

This whole “faith” thing isn’t working out.

It’s evening in the greenhouse. Ashe is fresh off his first seminar, seated at the edge of a pallet with a bundle of papers in his lap and pot of dirt wedged between his knees. Every so often, he swears under his breath, glancing up towards the setting sun before returning to his task with a renewed sense of urgency.

Sana, perched atop a trellis, leans her chin on Christophe’s shoulder. “What’s his deal?”

“Faith homework,” says Christophe, tired by association. “He’s trying to make a seedling grow from scratch. He’s been at it for almost an hour.”

Sana tilts her head. Ashe is watching the dirt so intently that it looks as if he is about to pop a blood vessel at any second.

“Ah,” she says. “Not much growing happening, huh.”

“I can _hear_ you,” Ashe grumbles. He stares at the pot. It stares back at him. It’s fairly small, but it’s heavier than it looks, unglazed pottery filled to the brim with soil.

Sana stretches, long and languid like a cat. “Didn’t they teach you how to do this in class before they sent you off to do it yourself?”

Ashe shakes his head. “I started late, remember? Everyone else did this weeks ago,” he says. “Professor Manuela gave me some notes and told me to see her during office hours to go over them, but it’s a Thursday night, so she’s probably out on a date.”

Sana snorts. “Some professor,” she says, hopping off the trellis to squat on the ground next to him instead.

“Don’t be like that,” Ashe says, frowning. “She’s trying her best.”

“Sure, sure. Does it get tiring, seeing the good in people all the time?”

Ashe opens his mouth to reply. Sana sticks her hand through it. He splutters, shaking his head to rid himself of the buzzing cold that it leaves in his teeth.

“Don’t answer that,” she adds as an afterthought.

“Rude,” he complains, which earns him a toothy grin. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. Office hours or not, it’s still my job to catch up. So I’ll sit here and I’ll do this for as long as it takes for me to—”

“Ashe?”

A shadow falls over him mid-sentence, blocking out the setting sun. Ashe nearly falls backwards into the vegetable patch out of surprise. He has barely enough time to right himself before a soft, familiar hand comes into view.

“You know,” Mercedes says, “if you find yourself talking to the plants, that usually means it’s time to take a break.”

“M-Mercedes!” Ashe stammers. He sets his notes aside and takes her proffered hand, pulling himself to his feet. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Oh, not long,” she says with an airy wave. “I’m guessing that it’s not the same for you?”

Ashe is tempted to lie. It’s only a split second of soul-piercing eye contact that makes him decide against it. “It’s been a while,” he admits.

Mercedes smiles, an easy thing. “Come, walk with me,” she suggests. “It’ll do you good to get away from your work for a little while.”

At this hour, the monastery is oddly peaceful, awash in long, honeyed light. Most students are wrapping up their training and chores for the day, getting ready to break off into study groups or grab a quick meal. The clamor of the afternoon has dissolved into a low hum, and the world feels newly weighted, freshly still.

Mercedes leads him down towards the fishing pond, away from the general migration towards the dining hall. Once the water comes into view, she takes off her shoes, walking barefoot the rest of the way down the length of the pier.

_Dangerous,_ Ashe thinks, worried about all of the gross pointy things that tend to end up on the ground near fisheries, but the walk isn’t that long, and Mercedes is beckoning for him to join her.

By the time he gets to the edge of the pier, she’s already seated, swinging her legs idly over the unbroken surface of the pond. Ashe sits cross-legged next to her, not sure if the fish will want to nibble his toes but unwilling to take the risk. On his other side, he sets the seedling down, careful to place it somewhere he won’t accidentally knock it into the water.

For a few minutes, they sit in silence, watching the sun fall slowly behind the line of mountains cutting jagged across the open sky.

“How did you like today’s seminar, Ashe?” Mercedes finally says, breaking the silence. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to sit with you during class. Professor Manuela rotates scribes, and I find it easier to take notes at the front of the room.”

Ashe shakes his head. “I don’t mind,” he says. “It was, ah..."

Mercedes hums. “What didn't you like about it?"

Ashe flushes, but she's not wrong. He crosses his arms, thinking back to the hour and a half he’d spent at the back of the faith classroom. Professor Manuela had lectured almost the entire time, words like _white magic_ and _directed healing_ and _vital energy_ flying right over his head. Marianne had asked a question about energy redirection that had made his head spin. Linhardt had woken up from a dead nap to explain the difference between celestial and natural magics before literally just _falling asleep again._

“I feel a little outclassed,” he confesses. “You’re all so far ahead of me, I don’t even know what I don’t know.”

Ashe looks out over the water. Mercedes lets him have his space. There’s something about this that makes him want to say more.

“I’m not very good at this,” he elaborates, staring into the surface of the pond. “School, I mean. I never had anything like this when I was young, and sometimes I feel like I’m still—I’m still learning how to act. I make a lot of mistakes. And I know An—” —he stumbles over the name— “—Annette says it’s because my brain hasn’t been trained to think this way, but sometimes it’s hard to believe that it’s not just because I’m not—cut out to be here at all.”

_And I can’t afford to let that be true._

He becomes suddenly, sharply aware of Christophe’s eyes on his back.

“Ah,” Mercedes says, nodding. “I know the feeling.”

Ashe blinks. “You do?”

She chuckles. “Why do you sound so surprised?”

“You—you’re so _good_ at things,” he says. “I guess I just assumed you’ve always been.” Her laugh comes a bit fuller this time, rosy and bright.

“That’s very kind,” Mercedes says, “but I’m certainly not good at everything. Nobody is. I’ve just had a little more time to figure some things out.”

Christophe’s hand passes through his hair, a cool ruffling breeze.  Ashe leans back, propping his weight on his palms. “Things like what?”

“Most of them,” she says. “Can I ask you a question, Ashe?”

Overhead, a bird caws. “Of—of course.”

“Why did you want to become a healer?”

The answer comes to him without thinking. “To protect people,” he says.

“I see,” Mercedes says, tapping the surface of the pond with her heel. Circular ripples radiate from the point where her skin makes contact with the water. “So what do you think it means to protect people?”

“Protection means…” Ashe bites his lip, letting a roulette of faces run through his head. _Violet, Cole. Christophe, Lonato. The Blue Lions. The professor._ “Protection means… helping people. Keeping them safe. Keeping them away from things that might hurt them.”

Mercedes is looking at him, now, a single point of even-keeled blue among spinning sunset gold.

“Understood,” she says. “That’s an admirable goal. But what if you don’t _know_ what might help them, or hurt them? What if your assessment is wrong?”

Ashe turns the question over and over in his mind until it makes even less sense than it did when it first left her mouth. “What?”

“Let me give you an example,” she says. “That pot sitting next to you. That’s one of Professor Manuela’s assignments, right?”

Ashe nods.

“Have you had any luck with it?”

“N-no.”

“What have you tried so far?”

Ashe pulls the little pot into his lap again. It sits there, dormant, nestled in the crook of his legs.

“Professor Manuela said that magical healing works by manipulating vital energy in the body,” he says, feeling as if he’s reciting words from a textbook page. “So I’ve been trying to… put energy into the pot? To make it grow? The plant hasn’t done anything, though, so I’m not sure if it worked.”

Mercedes shakes her head. “You’ve certainly managed to do _something,”_ she says, and before Ashe can ask what that thing might be, she lays her hands on either side of the pot and breathes.

In an instant, the dirt takes on an almost blinding white glow, one that nearly rivals the sun sinking below the hills.

Ashe yelps. “Wh—”

“Faith magic is many things,” Mercedes tells him, light reflected brilliantly in her eyes. “It’s about belief, yes, it’s about systems and vital energy—but mostly, it’s about connection."

This sounds vaguely familiar. She continues before he can fully process why.

"None of this energy is mine, by the way,” she adds, letting go of the pot entirely. “I’ve just made yours a little more visible. Now, I’m sure you know better than I do—what happens when you overwater a plant?”

It’s the plant metaphor that does it, really.

“It’s, not good,” he mumbles. "It can't breathe. It can't eat. It rots, or it drowns."

Mercedes smiles kindly at him.

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad, Ashe,” she says. “You only did what you thought would be best, based on what you knew. That’s not a bad thing! It shows that you care. But sometimes, we can hurt others by caring about them when we don’t know how.”

Ashe is starting to feel uncomfortably sure that she is not talking about plants.

“If you were to ask me,” she says, “faith magic is about listening. It’s about doing everything you can to make sure you’re paying attention to what the other person is trying to say.”

He looks down at the glowing cup of dirt in his lap.

Bit by bit, he pulls his excess energy from the soil, unburying the seed’s tiny, bright presence. Bit by bit, he thinks about what he needs to do to turn care into faith, into understanding. Something more good than harm.

“Mercedes,” Ashe says suddenly, urgently, “I think I have to go write a letter.”

“Hey, you,” Annette says the next morning, five minutes before class starts.

“Hey,” Ashe repeats, shuffling awkwardly in his seat. He looks up, trying to gauge her reaction. She’s standing in front of his desk, for sure, but she still won't look directly at him. “Um. Annette, I just wanted to say I’m sor—”

“Save it,” Annette says, and drops three honeycomb candies onto the desktop before she drops her full bodyweight onto the bench next to him. “I’m sorry too. I said some things I shouldn’t have. We don’t have to talk about—well, okay, maybe we should talk about it—but I think it might be a lot for you, and it’s definitely a lot for me, and I miss you and I’m tired of fighting so for now can we maybe just skip the part where we talk about it?”

This is a lot of words to take in, and they happen very fast. Annette is staring at her hands with great focus and determination, her cheeks the approximate shade of a ripe peach.

“Let’s do that,” Ashe agrees.

Annette flops her head onto his shoulder with an audible sigh of relief.

"Let's do that," she echoes.

Christophe, sitting in the desk behind them, snickers.

“All’s well that ends well, huh?”

(Six minutes later: the professor begins class with their monthly mission briefing.)

(Seven minutes later: the world ends.)

_12_ _ th _ _Day of the Garland Moon  
_ _Imperial Year 1180_

_(A pair of letters. They appear to have been written at the same time. Line for line, they almost read like a conversation.)_

_hey ashe, what the fuck_

_[ Hi, Ashe. Please don’t read Violet’s letter first. ]_

_oh, sorry. DEAR ashe: what the fuck_

_[ Ahem. ]_

_[ Dear brother: ]_

_[ It’s good to hear from you! We hope that your recovery is going well. How is everything at the monastery? I know that you told us not to worry, but to be honest, it’s a little hard to not. ]_

_are you ok??? i mean, you’re alive, i guess, or you couldn’t have written a letter about it_

_but are you ok!!! does it still hurt? did your arm fall off?_

_[ You… couldn’t have written a letter if your arm fell off, right? ]_

_ANYWAY_

_ashe we’re really glad you’re alive and hopefully your arm didn’t fall off. we think that it is very cool for you to have arms (plural)_

_[ We’re grateful that you took the time to write home to us— ]_

_i would’ve been really mad if you didn’t say anything!!_

_[ —but that was also really frightening news— ]_

_we miss you a lot. like, a LOT a lot_

_[ —so, we were wondering. Is there any chance that the academy would let you take a trip back home? ]_

_[ It’s alright if you can’t manage it— ]_

_come home or i’ll march down magdred way and i’ll dunk the archbishop myself!_

_[ —but it would mean a lot to us if you could find the time to visit. ]_

_…ok fine maybe listen to cole this time_

_oh, but—even if you really can’t make it, it’s alright, you know? your classes are more important, obviously, and we know you’re really busy._

_[ You always tell us that you’re proud of us, but I think it’s about time we said it back— ]_

_we’re really proud of everything you’ve done at garreg mach so far._

_[ —we love you so much, Ashe. ]_

_we hope to see you soon?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's some stuff that's all loosely related to itself
> 
> \- there is not a single scene in this chapter that did not have to be chopped and reassembled at least twice. be nice to me, i am very tired  
> \- i'm pushing the next update to three weeks out instead of the usual two! it's a pretty big chapter, and i've got some goodies i wanna release on the side, but i need a little time to put them together  
> \- [here's a hint](https://twitter.com/redamantian/status/1302658169479598080?s=20)
> 
> next time: someone i loved once gave me a box full of darkness. it took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.
> 
> [@redamantian](https://twitter.com/redamantian) on twitter! (you can retweet this chapter [here](https://twitter.com/redamantian/status/1302617095948120065?s=21).)


	7. the uses of sorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s something wrong with this picture, something nobody else can see.
> 
> Somebody here is telling a lie, to unmake Lord Lonato before his time, and Ashe has never been one to let these things go forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Someone I loved once gave me  
>  a box full of darkness._
> 
> _It took me years to understand  
>  that this, too, was a gift._
> 
> _— Mary Oliver, “The Uses of Sorrow”_
> 
> **content warning:** a character dies on-screen in this chapter. it's not a major character death or anything, but be aware that it does happen. there's also a passing reference to mass graves, and kind of a lot of blood all around. take care!

_This doesn’t make sense._

It’s this thought alone that manages to keep Ashe upright, long after the rest of them have scattered like leaves in the wind. It sits there at the center of everything, steadfast and still, even as he runs through the mission brief over and over and over in his head.

Lord Lonato has rallied troops against the Church of Seiros, the professor said. The Church is sending the Blue Lions with the rear guard of the Knights of Seiros to deal with the fallout—

_But that doesn’t make sense._

As far as Ashe knows, Lonato shouldn’t have any reason to march on the Church. It’s a hopeless cause, for one, and no man in western Faerghus keeps his title without knowing how to pick and choose his battles. Lonato is smart, and Lonato is kind, and above all else, Lonato is _faithful_ —the kind of man who guides his children through their prayers every night, who attends every weekly service that the Western Church has to offer.

Lonato, of all people, would never dream of raising his sword against the Goddess.

_None of this makes any—_

“Hey, hey, mister. Don’t you go to school at Garreg Mach?”

The question wrenches Ashe back into reality. He’s in the middle of ladling soup into a cheap wooden bowl, perched behind the cramped counter of a merchant’s stall near the back of the marketplace. Next to him sits a huge pot and a hastily-scrawled sign; in front of him, two kids in clothes that have been mended almost to the point of rags, staring at him with expectant eyes.

Aside from his boots, there’s not a single part of him in uniform today. He’s foregone his jacket and pants in favor of the leggings and hoodie he always wears underneath, sturdy bookbag swapped out for worn leather. There’s very little to identify him as a student.

“That’s right,” he says, blinking as the kid’s face lights up. “But how’d you know that? There are lots of kids at the academy. You must be pretty smart to remember me.”

The boy shakes his head modestly. His hair swishes with the motion. He’s thin as a rail. “Not smarts,” he says, glancing at the girl next to him—a sister? a friend?—who seems to be refraining from downing her soup in one go out of politeness alone. “I never even saw you before. But you’re one of big sis Liesel’s friends, right?”

Ashe frowns a little. Out of habit, he glances at Christophe, but Christophe just shrugs, staring listlessly into the crowd.

He’s been doing a lot of that, lately.

Ashe pastes the smile back onto his face.

“I don’t think I know anyone named Liesel,” he says.

The girl bounces on her toes. Soup almost spills over the side of her bowl. “Of course you do,” she says impatiently. “Big sis Liesel knows everybody.”

This is not really how _knowing people_ works, but Ashe nods anyway. “Maybe she forgot to tell me her name,” he suggests. “What does she look like?”

“That must be it,” the boy says, nodding in return. “Um, let’s see. She looks like, _grrrr,_ most of the time? But she’s only mean to bad people! She’s cool and smart and funny and—”

He’s two seconds from giving up on the question entirely when the kid adds, “She almost got caught at the market the other day, but she said you let her go, so that means you’re a friend.”

Ashe blinks. “Oh,” he says, thoughts momentarily replaced by the memory of stolen oranges and a tall, blue-eyed ghost in the rain. The relief of it burns as it blooms in his chest, a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “Yes, I—I remember her now. I’m glad to hear she’s still doing alright!”

“Me too,” the boy tells Ashe as he hands him a topped-off bowl of soup.

“Be careful with that, don’t—” His warning turns into a laugh as the kid slurps up a mouthful to stop the bowl from spilling over. “Well, that works too. See? I knew you were smart all along.”

A faint, rosy blush dusts his cheeks. His friend tugs on his sleeve, eager to get away from the main thoroughfare.

“Off you go,” Ashe says. “Tell your friends I’ll be here until noon, okay?”

The boy can’t speak, cheeks rounded full like a squirrel, but he nods furiously as the girl drags him away. Ashe spares a moment to smile after them.

When Ashe was a child, before Lonato but after the plague that took his parents, he used to make soup every week for the kids in Gaspard’s eastern quarter. Broth, potage, glorified mint tea—it’s the one thing he’s always been able to pull together, even when everything else is falling apart.

_You weren’t made for this,_ says a small voice at the back of his mind. _This is a truth you can’t follow. If you walk onto that battlefield, only one of you will come out alive._

He… can’t really argue with that. The facts are facts. Lord Lonato of Gaspard has rebelled against the Church, and the Church will quell his rebellion, regardless of whether or not his sons are there to see it.

Still: it doesn’t make _sense._ The Lonato that Ashe knows would never throw everything away so carelessly. The Lonato that Ashe knows would never turn his back on the faith that has always guided him.

There’s something wrong with this picture, something nobody else can see. Somebody here is telling a lie, to unmake Lord Lonato before his time, and Ashe has never been one to let these things go forgotten.

“We’ll figure it out,” he mutters under his breath, wooden countertop rough under the heels of his hands. “We’ll make it right.”

Next to him, Christophe says nothing.

The sky yawns slate-blue above them, distant as memory, silent as death.

With just a few weeks until they’re set to march, the professor wastes no time in getting the Blue Lions set up for certification exams. For Ashe, this mostly means extra office hours with Professor Manuela, catching up on the remedial training that he’s missed over the past few months. He’s become something of a regular in the infirmary—even students from other houses have started to recognize him, and Manuela likes having him on hand to direct traffic when she gets busy.

Byleth had apologized, once, when they’d caught him stumbling half-asleep back to his dorm after a late night mixing salves and memorizing anatomy charts. _If I could get away with not testing you, I would,_ they’d said. _Manuela isn’t pushing you too hard, is she?_

_Not at all,_ Ashe had insisted, and then he’d walked into his exam the next morning on two hours of sleep and scraped out a passing grade by the skin of his teeth.

Most of the class isn’t testing until next week, so in the meantime, they’ve taken to meeting up in the knights’ hall in the afternoons to prepare. Since Ashe, Annette, and Mercedes have already passed their certifications, they’ve been relegated to flashcard duty for everyone else.

“Let’s see,” Ashe says, seated on the steps at the edge of the arena. Next to him, Sylvain sits with his elbows propped on his knees, squinting at the array of cards he’s laid out. Dimitri and Ingrid circle each other, training lances at the ready. “Your Highness, this one’s for you. What’s the name of the combat art most commonly used to disarm cavalry?”

He doesn’t even hesitate. “Knightkneeler,” he says, looking to Ashe for approval.

“Correct!”

Dimitri’s smile could pull the sun from the sky. Beneath the edge of his gauntlets, his shadows burble contentedly.

Sylvain picks up another card, holding it up too close to his face before he lowers it to look at Ingrid and Dimitri again. “Ingrid!” he chirps. “Name a combat art used to land a hit and then run away.”

“Hit… and Run…?” Ingrid’s brow furrows. “Sylvain, I swear, if this is some kind of trick—”

“It could be,” he says, straight-faced and mysterious. It’s not until Ingrid narrows her eyes and levels her lance at him that he acquiesces. “O-okay, okay, that was right!”

They go through a few more rounds like this. Every so often, Ingrid and Dimitri attempt the forms they’ve named, breaking up the monotony with short bouts of sparring. Somewhere behind them, Ashe can hear Annette quizzing Felix on battle forecast formulas; on the far side of the room, near the hearth, Mercedes and Dedue are discussing tactics for unit placement in combat.

It’s—nice, he thinks, even knowing what they’re working towards. It’s nice to be together like this. It’s a far cry from that first night in the dining hall, alone in a crowd with nothing but ghosts and the ghosts of ghosts for company.

His ghosts are all hanging out together today, seated in a clump on his other side. Sana is live-commentating each sparring match while Avi makes elaborate knots in Christophe’s hair. Christophe only interjects occasionally, sparse and subdued, but he seems a bit more settled than he’s been, and that alone gives Ashe more hope than he’s had since the mission briefing.

“Come on, princeling,” Sana mutters under her breath, eyes tracking the flash of Dimitri’s gauntlets as he winds up for a decisive blow. “You can do this. You’ve got her cornered.”

Ashe watches Dimitri’s onslaught push Ingrid towards the edge of the ring without a word. She isn’t fighting like someone who’s cornered. Her dodges and parries are measured, each thrust baiting her opponent into following her a little farther back.

“I don’t think so,” Christophe says, echoing Ashe’s thoughts. “She’s got a plan, you can tell.”

Sana crosses her arms. “You’re giving her too much credit,” she says snidely. “Even if she does, he hits like a charging bear. She’ll go down first.” The lance clips Ingrid’s shoulder, as if to illustrate her point.

Christophe blinks. “You really don’t like her, do you?”

Ashe is only half-listening to this conversation. Most of his attention is trained on Ingrid’s footwork, the way she almost dances in the space between attacks. It’s not like her at all.

She’s fighting like someone whose only goal in a fight is to get out of it. She’s fighting like—

_She’s fighting like me,_ he realizes, just moments before Ingrid ducks out past the wide arc of Dimitri’s swing and shoves him out of the ring with the butt of her lance.

Dimitri goes down hard. For a moment, the arena is quiet.

“Point to Ingrid,” Sylvain says, startled.

Ingrid’s cheeks are flushed with a combination of exertion and shame. She drops her weapon immediately, rushing to Dimitri’s side.

“Your Highness, I’m so sorry,” she babbles. “That was a cheap trick, I didn’t—”

Dimitri isn’t angry at all. He seems surprised, but not upset, laughing as he dusts off his knees and lets her pull him to his feet.

“No need to apologize,” he says, voice warm. “You bested me, Ingrid. Take pride in your victory.”

Ingrid’s frown only deepens. “But—”

Dimitri shakes his head. “If cheap tricks will keep you alive to fight another day,” he says, turning just far enough to meet Ashe’s gaze, “then I should be nothing but glad that you’ve learned to use them.”

Ingrid opens her mouth, but before she can reply, the door to the knights’ hall swings open.

In that moment, something—shifts. It’s like all the air gets sucked out of the room. Ashe sways a little where he sits, lightheaded. Dimitri’s shadows, so docile before, begin to chatter and writhe, winding their way up his arms like tendrils of dark ivy. Across the floor, Felix’s head snaps up, sharp and unsettled and not sure why.

Avi flinches, letting go of Christophe’s hair as if he’s been shocked.

“Has anybody seen the new professor?”

There’s a woman standing in the doorway. A knight, for sure. That much is obvious from her armor, pale gleaming plate in the typical fashion of the Knights of Seiros. Her hair is pulled into a messy blonde horsetail, hands gloved and gauntleted. At her hip sits a vicious, broad-toothed sword.

She looks familiar. Ashe has never seen her before in his life.

“Not here, I’m afraid,” Dimitri says. His shadows surge like a rising tide, wrapped almost protectively around his chest, his neck. “Did you need them for something?”

The knight nods, eyes flickering around the room. Ashe pushes down the rising static in his throat, trying to get a closer look. She seems young—if Christophe were alive, they’d be about the same age, he thinks.

“Blue Lions, right?” she says, which is not a very good question when the crown prince of Faerghus is standing right there. It takes Ashe a moment to register that she is walking towards him. The crackling in his ears grows louder with every step. “You must be Ashe.”

“That’s me,” he manages. Next to him, Christophe shudders. There’s a sort of electricity gathering around his shaking hands, guttering sparks that pop against his skin.

“I’m sorry to hear about Lord Lonato,” says the knight.

For a moment, Ashe stares back at her, unsure of what to say. He breathes in, and cold terror crashes against the inside of his chest. He breathes out, and his lungs burn, empty and afraid and alone.

This fear doesn’t make sense, he thinks. He feels like he’s in danger. He feels like he is about to die.

“Ah,” he says, trying to swallow down his rapidly rising panic. “Um. Sorry, do I—do I know you?”

The knight blinks. “…no,” she says after a moment. The noise swells, fevered and deafening. “My apologies. I’m Catherine, one of the Knights of Seiros. I report directly to Lady Rhea. I’ll be helping your class on your mission this month.”

Inhale, fear. Exhale, sorrow.

First, the fear. Then, the sorrow.

These feelings, they’re—

All of this is coming from _Christophe,_ he realizes, wrenching his gaze away from Catherine to steal a glance at his brother. Christophe, cloaked in dark lightning, his human form broken down into a shadowy, stilted silhouette. He is stuttering so hard that Ashe is afraid he’s about to blink out of existence. He is staring at Catherine with a look so small and stricken that Ashe barely recognizes his face.

They need to go. They need to go _now._

“I—” Ashe starts, but finds that it’s no use. His voice refuses to work, his feet rooted in place. The sparks burn cold where they touch his skin. “That—”

A large hand claps down on his shoulder.

“Sorry you’re having trouble finding the professor,” Sylvain says easily, his voice a steady anchor amidst the overwhelming crackling in Ashe’s ears. “They’re pretty busy, so it can be hard to get a hold of them. Your best bet’s probably the fishing pond—that’s where they go whenever they’re free.”

“Huh,” Catherine says, turning away from Ashe to look at Sylvain instead. “Thank you. I’ll try the fishing pond, then.”

Ashe must miss the part where Catherine leaves, because the next thing he knows, he’s curled up on the ground, forehead pressed to the dirt, trembling under the weight of Christophe’s distress.

It’s so cold. He’s never been so cold in his life.

“Ashe!” someone calls, alarmed. Vaguely, he becomes aware that he’s surrounded, the warmth of other living bodies driving out the ghost chill that threatens to freeze the blood in his veins.

“Ashe,” someone—Annette?—repeats, thin arms wrapped around his shoulders. She squeezes him tight, holding him steady through the strongest pulse of static yet. “Ashe, it’s okay, it’ll be okay—”

_Oh,_ Ashe thinks faintly, knees stinging where they must have hit the ground. They think he’s upset. They think he’s upset about the mission. Which is true, but—

Through sheer force of will, Ashe hauls himself into a sitting position, determined to explain that he’s fine. As he does, he catches sight of Sana, gritting her teeth as she reaches into Christophe’s sparking, shadowed form and begins to pull him away.

“Don’t,” she says, voice tight with pain, a heavy note of warning weighted against the protest on the tip of Ashe’s tongue. Avi stands next to her, determined, solemn in a way that doesn’t belong on a child’s face. “He needs to calm down, and you’re in no shape to do it. Leave the dead to the dead, Ashe.”

“I’m not—” he starts, but Felix cuts him off, and the Molinaro siblings disappear through the closed door.

“If you’re not okay, you’re not okay,” Felix says bluntly. “Don’t slow the rest of us down by pretending you are.”

Ingrid punches him none too lightly in the arm. “What he _means_ to say is,” she adds, “we’re here for you.”

Ashe rubs at his eyes. With the ghosts safely outside, his head is beginning to clear, leaving him small and tired and vulnerable in a way that he’s not entirely sure he’s okay with. Ashe is fond of his classmates, he is, but at the end of the day, he’s too used to being alone—there’s too much that only the lingering dead can ever know about, too many secrets he’ll never be able to share.

But Ingrid has a point, maybe. The Blue Lions have been there for him since day one, well before they knew anything about each other at all. Over these past months, they’ve given him trust, and care, and—

Love. Like Lonato and Christophe before them, they’ve given him so much love.

So—he lets them. He lets Annette squeeze the sadness out of him, and he lets Mercedes patch up his split knees. He lets Ingrid and Dimitri and Felix make three different metaphors about supporting him through his harshest battles, and comes up with three different knight’s tales that he wants to make them read when this awful month is over. He lets Sylvain tell him, quiet and kind, that he’s keeping an ear to the ground for any word of what’s really going on in western Faerghus.

When they finally disband for the night, and Ashe finds himself still unsteady on his feet, he lets Dedue prop him up on the walk back to the dorms without complaint. And hours later, when Ashe is staring at the ceiling of his empty, empty room—he lets himself knock on Dedue’s door, and Dedue lays down some blankets and his spare pillow without question, and Ashe lays on his floor breathing in the smell of bronze and jasmine until his thoughts finally quiet down enough for him to drift off into a fitful slumber.

When sleep finally takes him, Ashe dreams of his brother, who died scared and sad and alone, and wonders if Christophe ever let anyone be there for him.

The day of the mission arrives sooner than it should.

Christophe sticks to him like a burr as they walk past the monastery gates, a listless, faraway look in his eyes. Sana had warned him as much when she’d brought him back with her that morning. _This sort of thing used to happen to my people all the time, after the Tragedy,_ she’d said. _He’ll be out of it for a while._

It’s still unnerving. Ashe can’t remember a time when Christophe was ever this quiet.

This march feels fundamentally different from the march out to Zanado. It’s just as early in the morning, but everybody is alert, on edge. The sky above doesn’t do much for the ambience, thick gray clouds that fade to a blinding white as the sun rises.

Catherine is here too, as promised. She’s near the front with the professor, holding a rather one-sided conversation about sword technique. Christophe’s outline falters a bit every time he looks at her, but thankfully, he remains otherwise himself.

Annette links her arm with one of Ashe’s as they make their way down the mountain.

“Maybe it’ll be okay,” she says hopefully. “We’re not here to fight, right? Seteth said so. We’re just here to deal with the aftermath.”

“The _aftermath,”_ Felix echoes, followed by a yelp as Sylvain flicks his ear.

“Don’t listen to him,” Ingrid says.

“Yeah,” Sylvain adds, casting Felix a pointed look. “Whatever happens, we’ll do what we can.”

Felix looks away. “Right,” he says. “We’ll do what we can.”

Ashe looks down at his feet. A cold, translucent hand brushes across the tip of his nose. When he looks back up, Sana is floating in front of him, arms crossed.

“It’ll be okay,” she says quietly. “No matter what happens. You will be okay. You and Christophe both.”

The fog is settling heavy now, cool and damp and almost thick enough to feel the weight of it on his skin. He can hardly see anything beyond Annette’s worried face, Sylvain’s bright hair mere footsteps in front of him. They must be entering Magdred Way. It’s even worse than it was months ago, back when Ashe had first traveled to the monastery, with Samuel and Christophe and the Gaspard knights in tow.

The professor calls them to a halt. A knot of dread sits heavy in his stomach.

For a moment, the world holds its breath.

The first arrow whips past his ear.

The battlefield as a medic is an infinitely more stressful experience than the battlefield as a soldier. With a weapon in his hands, his view had been restricted to the path he’d needed to cut forwards, even if he’d done a poor job of the actual cutting. Now, he feels responsible for much more than himself—his consciousness stretches taut across the battlefield, keeping careful stock of how the rest of his classmates are faring.

Somehow, still, it feels better. He feels present, ready to move.

The professor had thrust a torch into his hands before dashing off into the fray, shouting commands and pulling some of his classmates along with them. Catherine is somewhere to the south, hacking her way through the forest with her own soldiers. Dimitri, Ingrid, and Felix are on the front lines; Sylvain and Dedue are positioned nearby, a little further north. The conspicuous _clink_ of weapons against armor suggests that the professor is using the two of them to bait the enemy from the trees.

Ashe is against this strategy on principle, but he has to admit, it’s working. Sylvain and Dedue are both well-armored enough to tank the hits, and at this range, Annette can easily finish them off before they’re able to duck back into the cover of the forest.

Then, he watches a spear slam through Dedue’s shoulder, and his heart stops.

Mercedes plucks the torch from his hands and pushes him gently in the back. “Go,” she says. Somehow, the word cuts clean through the clamor of battle, spurring him to move until he remembers how to breathe again on his own.

“I’ll cover you,” Annette adds.

Ashe is quick to cross the distance between them, with Annette’s spells at his back to cut through the fog in his path. As he approaches, he hears a familiar voice yelling at Dedue in an unfamiliar language, interspersed with broken bits of Fodlan that seem to consist of mostly insults. The moment Sana notices Ashe, she turns her attention to him instead.

“It’s not critical,” she says. Ashe doesn’t want to know how familiar she must be with a wounded Dedue to be able to know that at a glance. “But I think he’d appreciate the help.”

“Dedue,” Ashe says, trying to get his attention. Dedue’s eyes snap to his, a brilliant sea-green in the shifting mist. His axe is held loosely in one hand, the other clutched around the shaft in his shoulder. His face is a little pale, shirt stained dark beneath his armor. When he moves, Ashe notices the full head of the spear poking out of his back, his body holding the weapon like some sort of odd sheath.

Ashe breathes out. As wounds go, it’s not terrible. It hit a gap in his armor, and it’s gone clean through. The spear is—a problem, but he can probably remove it.

“Sorry,” he says, pulling the knife from his belt. “This might hurt a bit.”

He cuts the spear head free of the shaft first. It falls to the ground with a thump, heavy and crude. Then, he grips the long end of the shaft and _pulls;_ Dedue bites down on a pained grunt, trying his best to keep quiet. Once the spear is out, Ashe puts his hands on either side of the hole left behind and closes his eyes.

_Faith is about listening,_ says the little version of Mercedes who lives in his head. He reaches into the wound with his own magic, lets the body under his hands tell him the story until the picture becomes clear. The spear didn’t hit anything too complicated, he thinks, relieved. He just needs to stop the bleeding.

His homework comes to mind, diagrams of muscle and artery and vein and bone, drilled into him by Manuela’s instruction and Annette’s unforgiving eye. He’s grateful for it now. He moves quickly, confidently, knitting flesh and blood back into their proper place.

When Ashe pulls back, there’s blood all over his hands, soaking Dedue’s shirt—but Dedue rolls his shoulder once, twice, and the crimson-spattered smile he gives Ashe is worth everything.

“Good to go,” he says. “Thank you, Ashe.”

Ashe swallows, a little dizzy. “Of cour—”

“Ashe, look out!”

It’s Annette’s voice, high and panicked. Ashe barely has time to think before he registers the sound of a second incoming spear whistling through the air.

Dedue moves impossibly fast, planting himself in front of Ashe before the spear can reach him. The weapon clinks harmlessly off his breastplate. His axe is too far away to pick up without turning around, so he rushes forward with nothing but his bare fists, a single blow to the jaw that sends their would-be assailant crumpling like paper. Ashe is close enough to catch a glimpse of the man’s face as he goes down.

“Wait!” he cries as Dedue stoops to pick up his axe. Dedue pauses, confused, but complies. Meanwhile, Ashe stumbles to check on the soldier—

—no, not a soldier. He knows that face.

That face shouldn’t be here.

_“Samuel?”_ he demands, kneeling. The Gaspard cook’s son blinks back at him, still reeling from the punch. “Why—why are you here? Where’s Lonato? Where are the knights?”

“A-Ashe?” Samuel coughs, one hand pressed to his gut, eyes widening just a fraction. “Goddess… I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

Samuel shifts a little. His palm comes away slick. Ashe realizes in the same breath that his entire shirtfront is really not supposed to be that color. “Sam, you're—“

“Ashe,” Samuel repeats, a little more insistent this time. “You’re not here… to kill him… are you?”

“No,” Ashe says, faster than he’s ever said anything in his life. “I’m not.”

Something like relief crosses Samuel’s face. “Good,” he says, eyes fluttering closed. “Always knew you were… a good kid.”

Ashe’s heart is thumping in his ears. “Wait,” he says, scrabbling to get a better look at the wound in Samuel’s stomach. “Don’t go yet, please. I can help, I can save you—”

Samuel bats his hand away. “Save it,” he says. “You’re not very good at this yet, are you, Ashe? You look exhausted… already. You need to save that… for the people who matter.” He laughs, and the sound rattles in his throat. “All of us, we were all… willing to die here… for Lord Lonato. You know… House Gaspard. You know that.”

Ashe does. They may not be as grand about it as they are up north, but the people of Gaspard are still people of Faerghus, through and through.

“All of you,” he repeats. The realization chills him slowly and then all at once, hands numb with horror. “Sam—Samuel, are we fighting _militia?”_

“Now you’re getting it,” Samuel says.

“But that doesn’t make any sen—”

“Neither did the things that Lord Lonato told us about the Church,” he says. “About what they did… to Christophe. We loved him… like our own, you know. We couldn’t just… stand by.”

Next to him, Christophe goes very, very still.

“What,” Ashe whispers, “did they do?”

Samuel shakes his head. “Well, they killed him,” he says, words growing more labored with every breath. “But you… already knew that. It’s _why_ they killed him, Ashe. You know… how they said… he was executed… because of Duscur?”

Samuel’s eyes are too bright in his face.

“That was a _lie.”_

The whole world goes quiet.

“Sam,” Ashe says, low and urgent. “Sam, I need to talk to Lonato.”

Samuel looks at him in wonder. “You don’t… sound surprised,” he comments. “Did you know, somehow…? Ah, I guess it’s… not important now, huh.”

His voice grows thin, every word dragged from his lips. “Lord Lonato… is in the old cathedral… east of town,” he says. “Ashe, don’t… don’t let them kill him. I don’t… know how. But you can’t… let him die.”

“I won’t,” Ashe promises, almost surprised by the heat in his own voice. “I swear it.”

“Good.” Samuel smiles, the smallest lift of the corners of his mouth. It’s soft, familiar. It makes him feel like a child again. “I know… you’ll keep… that promise.”

His body reacts almost before he does. “Wait—” he cries, reaching once more for Samuel’s shirt, palms glowing with all the faith he can muster.

Samuel stares back at him, glassy-eyed, slight smile still frozen on his face.

Ashe isn’t sure how long he kneels there. Time only resumes when Dedue’s warm hand comes to rest on his shoulder, Sana’s cold fingertips ruffling his hair.

“I don’t understand,” Christophe whispers. “I never thought he would go this far.”

Dedue is kneeling next to him, pulling him gently away from the cooling body in his lap. His grip is firm, but there’s no judgment in those eyes. There never is.

“You heard what he said,” Dedue says, straightening. “And you made him a promise.”

“I made him a promise,” Ashe repeats. He takes Dedue’s hand and pulls himself to his feet. It doesn’t seem like Samuel’s ghost will be making its way back anytime soon. “Let’s go. We have to tell the professor.”

It doesn’t take long to find the rest of the class. Bodies litter the sides of the path where they’ve been. Ashe forces himself to keep looking, even when he recognizes their faces. Especially when he recognizes their faces.

He does a quick headcount once they’ve all met up again, relieved to find that everyone else is present and accounted for. Catherine and her soldiers are nowhere to be seen, but he gets the feeling that they’re alright.

Ashe explains the situation to the professor. Dimitri’s face darkens with every word.

“I knew something felt wrong,” he says, staring at his hands, his lance, bits of trailing viscera still hanging off the tip. “To send innocent civilians to their deaths—”

“This isn’t like him, professor,” Ashe cuts in, pleading. “Let me—let me talk to him. Just give me some time. I’ll make him see reason. I… I promised I’d try.”

Byleth meets his eyes, inscrutable. For a long moment, there’s only silence.

“The church won’t let him go easily,” they warn. “He’ll know that. He’ll be desperate. Ashe, are you sure you’re ready to face him?”

Ashe nods without hesitation, fists clenched at his sides.

Byleth turns around. Wordlessly, they gesture for the class to follow.

The fog only thickens as they press forward. Ashe knows exactly where the cathedral is, but in this weather, he’s not sure that he could lead them there if he tried. His torch has long since fizzled out, and it’s been a while since they’ve run into anyone, friend or foe. Catherine’s continued absence is starting to bother him.

_What if she’s already found him?_ a voice in his head taunts. _What if they’re fighting while you’re busy wandering in circles? What if Lonato is already—_

“Ashe,” says a small voice. He looks down to see Avi tugging at his leg. “Ashe, I think there’s someone hiding over there.”

Ashe follows Avi’s line of sight. Sure enough, there’s a copse of trees nearby. It’s small, thick enough to conceal an enemy or two. His stomach heaves at the thought of striking down another civilian.

“We can leave them, can’t we?” he whispers. “If they’re just hiding, they’re not hurting anyone.”

Avi shakes his head, catching Ashe off-guard. “No,” he says, agitated. “Ashe, there’s something wrong. That person isn’t—”

It’s too late. There’s a guttural scream, an almost-inhuman sound coming from the trees. Ashe can just make out the shape of Catherine’s glowing, many-toothed sword, the odd bird’s-beak mask that falls from her victim’s face onto the damp ground. A faded memory stirs at the back of his mind at its silhouette.

Then, inexplicably, the fog begins to clear.

“I _told_ you,” Avi says.

Ashe isn’t paying attention. He’s watching Catherine and her knights in horror as they charge down the path, where a small host of knights in familiar gray-and-blue armor await. “Professor,” he gasps, wild-eyed. Byleth’s head snaps towards the figures of the Knights of Seiros speeding towards the cathedral. “Professor, we have to go.”

Thanks to Catherine’s soldiers stopping every few paces to clash with Gaspard’s forces, they manage to make it just in time. Once they arrive, Byleth doesn’t need to say a word. The Blue Lions all turn in place, weapons at the ready, grim determination on their faces.

In front of them, the knights skid to a halt.

_“You,”_ Catherine snarls. “What is the meaning of this?”

The professor blinks, unflappable as ever.

“One of my students has asked that a certain consideration be taken into account,” they say. “You will not exercise the will of the church over his right to speak with his father.”

Catherine looks from Byleth to Ashe and the rest of his classmates, aghast. “The will of the Goddess is absolute,” she says slowly. “This man has committed the crime of raising his blade against the Church of Seiros. I won’t fall for your tricks, _professor._ If you and your students stand in my way, I won’t hesitate to cut you down.”

Byleth shakes their head. “My students will not fight you,” they say, partially a command to the Lions standing behind them. “I will be enough.”

Catherine’s jaw tightens. “Stand down,” she says.

“It’s nothing personal,” Byleth replies, even-keeled, ghost-hearted. “But there will be no false justice here. I believe in Ashe’s judgment. If Lord Lonato truly deserves to die, then at the end of all things, he will be dead.”

The professor nods at Ashe, still standing in the doorway, stunned.

“Go, Ashe,” they say.

Ashe swallows.

The door slams shut behind him.

It’s cooler inside the cathedral. The walls around him are cold, cut from heavy stone, damp and full with Magdred’s perpetual summer fog. It’s quieter, too, the din of the battle outside muted beyond the scope of his hearing. In here, even the blinding white of the sky has softened to a pale, clear blue; it streams through the broken windows, the face of the Goddess an unrecognizable mess of shattered green glass above.

Ashe remembers this place. Before the disease that took his parents, and so many of Gaspard’s people, they used to pray here. This building was abandoned years ago, not long after they’d started digging ditches east of town to burn and bury the bodies of those who had died from sickness.

Now, Lonato kneels at the altar, back to the door, his knighting sword clutched in front of him like a prayer.

At the sound of the door opening, he stirs, like a great lion awakening from its slumber. At either side of the altar sits a dead Gaspard soldier, presumably from their earlier clash with the church. Their helmets have since been drawn over their faces. They are as dignified as any corpse can claim to be.

Christophe takes a step forward and reaches out, only to remember that he is dead, and his father could not hear him if he tried.

“Ashe,” says Lonato, weary. He almost sounds as if he’s been expecting him. “Stand down. I have no wish to fight you.”

“Lonato,” Ashe says back, and he hates how small and thin his voice sounds, ringing pathetically in the dead air of the cathedral. “You’re outnumbered. If you leave this place, you—you’ll die.”

Lonato laughs, dull and without humor. A shiver rattles Ashe’s spine.

“Then it will be a fitting end,” he says. “And I will die a true knight of the Holy Kingdom, ever loyal to my king and my goddess.”

Ashe’s throat constricts. “Lonato,” he repeats. “Why? Why would you do this? What could be worth putting so many innocent lives on the line?”

Lonato steps into the light. It casts each soft wrinkle into sharp relief, years and years of grief etched into his face. Ashe wonders if he’s always looked this tired. Ashe wonders if he just never noticed it.

“You wouldn’t understand, Ashe,” he says. There’s a bone-deep exhaustion rooted behind those words, all the signs of an old pain resurfacing. “There’s no way that you would have been able to find out. I made sure of it. But your brother—” Lonato’s hand tightens around the hilt of his knighting sword before he slides it back into its scabbard. “Christophe did nothing wrong. His only fault was—trust. He trusted too readily, and he loved too well, and it turned around and stabbed him in the back, in the end.”

Christophe, standing next to him, flickers. Lonato turns to meet Ashe’s gaze in full, eyes slate-blue like his eldest son’s.

“The Fodlan you know sits in the hands of heretics,” he spits. “Liars and murderers and cheats, trading lives left and right for false promises of power—”

Lonato turns to face one of the shattered glass panels in the windows.

“Cassandra took my son from me,” he whispers. “Rhea took my son from me. And how could _that_ have been the will of the Goddess?”

“Father,” Christophe murmurs.

“I understand—more than you think,” Ashe protests haltingly around the lump in his throat. “I-I know that Christophe didn’t do anything wrong. But I can’t—I can’t tell you how, not now. Not yet. I’m not ready yet.” He squeezes his eyes shut, bracing himself for his next words. “But if I’d known—we could have—why didn’t you tell me _anything?”_

Lonato just smiles, bitter and sad and small, and shakes his head.

“I never wanted you to get caught up in this, Ashe,” he says. There’s something like mourning in his voice. “You, Violet, Cole… the three of you have seen so much of the darkness of this world already. I suppose I was only trying to keep you from seeing any more of it.”

Lonato barks out another mirthless laugh. “But now it’s too late,” he says. “To think that woman would steal one of my sons, and use the other against me… it’s almost too cruel to bear.”

Ashe can feel the blood drain out of his face as Lonato begins to advance, down the rows of rotting pews, the sound of his footfalls thunderous against the stone of the cathedral floor.

“It’s not too late,” Ashe insists, fear sitting square in his gut. Lonato says nothing. He pulls his lance from his back and takes another step forward, forcing Ashe to take a step back. “We can still—we’ll find a way out of this! You, and me, and Christophe, we can find out what’s wrong with the church together—”

“Enough,” Lonato rumbles, lance in hand. “I’ve heard enough, little knight. If you will not leave, then pick up your weapon and fight.”

But Ashe doesn’t have a weapon. Ashe only has the words stuck in his throat, the blistering faith in his heart.

“No,” Christophe whispers, horrified, as Lonato begins to raise his lance.

“I won’t fight you,” Ashe says.

Lonato lets out a momentary breath. It is soft, and then it is sad, and then it is over—and then there is nothing left on his face but cool, steely resolve, the emblem of every knight of Faerghus, the hallmark of every hero of every story that has ever been told.

“Then you will die,” he says simply.

_“No,”_ Christophe repeats, louder, planting himself between Ashe and Lonato. Dark lightning gathers around his silhouette, crackling and edged with light.

Ashe takes one wrong step backwards and trips, falls, hits the stone with an ungraceful clatter.

“You’ve suffered enough, Ashe,” Lonato says. “I’ll make it swift.”

Ashe stares helplessly at his father, at the ghost of his dead brother, at every single thing left undone that he and he alone can see. Lonato takes one step and then another, a figure of judgment, of terrible justice. It all converges upon him then, in the soft blue light of the ruined cathedral—the weight of what they’ve all been carrying alone, sorrow packaged and repackaged so many times over that it now sits between them, insurmountable, far too large to name.

“Rest."

Static roars in his ears. Ashe closes his eyes. The lance—

A cold, brilliant flash of light fills the room.

Everything goes dead silent.

For a moment, nothing happens. Ashe opens his eyes, confused. Lonato is standing in front of him, frozen, halfway through a lunge but not quite at the follow-through.

He is pale and very, very still, and he is staring at—the space between them. Not looking at Ashe, but the space between them.

_But that can’t be right,_ Ashe thinks hazily. That _can’t_ be right, because there’s nothing _there._

Nothing except—

“Father,” Christophe says, lance plunged through his translucent chest, point hovering just inches from Ashe’s heart. “Father, we need to talk.”

_It’s a cloudy evening on the outskirts of Garreg Mach. There’s a stiff breeze howling across the rooftops, the faint sound of monastery bells clamoring in the distance. A hooded figure ducks into an alleyway, blue eyes shifting from corner to corner as if he expects to be stopped at every turn._

_“Cassie,” he breathes. "Cassie, if you don’t show up in the next five minutes, I’m leaving.”_

_At first, he’s met with silence. Then, there’s a laugh. A young woman emerges from the shadows, a hood of her own drawn tight over a shock of golden hair._

_“I don’t remember you being so jumpy, Gaspard,” she says, elbowing him._

_Christophe can feel a smile tugging at the edges of his mouth, despite himself. “Yeah, well,” he hedges, ducking past her. “Times are tough. Can you really blame a guy for being careful?”_

_A soft, rueful smile works its way across Cassandra Charon’s face. She looks thinner than usual, Christophe notes, cheeks a little sunken, bruised under both eyes from lack of sleep. It’s worrisome at best. Everything that’s happened lately with Duscur must be taking a toll on her._

_“No, I guess not,” she says, letting him pull her safely out of view of the main thoroughfare. They end up leaning against opposite walls of the alleyway. Christophe pulls down his hood, shaking his hair out in unruly white waves._

_“So,” he says, blinking. “How’ve you been?”_

_That one coaxes a real smile out of her._ _“That’s just like you,” Cassandra grumbles. “How have I been. I’ve been on the run from my family, and my country is in shambles. I’ve been labeled a traitor and a thief. There’s_ no _good booze outside of Faerghus. And you, Christophe Gaspard, have the audacity to ask me how I’ve_ been?”

_Christophe has always liked Cassandra’s laugh. Solemnity just doesn’t suit her face._

_“Well,” he says, “to be fair, my country is in shambles, too.”_

_Cassandra smacks him across the shoulder. “Don’t play dumb,” she says._

_“Wasn’t playing,” he replies easily._

_A moment of bright, comfortable silence passes between them._

_When he speaks again, his voice is softer, a little more genuine. “I meant it, though,” he says. “How are you holding up? I heard some of the accusations—”_

_“Horseshit,” Cassandra mutters. “They're fucking horseshit. Listen, Christophe. They might have been good enough for my family, and they might have been good enough to drive me out of Faerghus, but they’re not true. You know they’re not. You_ know _I had nothing to do with—what are they calling it, now? The Tragedy of Duscur?”_

_“I know,” Christophe soothes, trying to rein her back in. Cassandra is a little hard to deal with when she gets fired up. “I know. I believe you. I trust you. That’s not what I wanted to ask.”_

_Cassandra bites her lip, the anger in her eyes fading._

_"Okay. Yeah," she says. "Shoot.”_

_“I knew you’d come to the monastery, but—haven’t you appealed for asylum yet?” Christophe gestures at the hood over her head, the darkness around them. “I figured if Rhea approved your request, you wouldn’t have to skulk around town like this.”_

_Cassandra looks away. “I was going to,” she admits. “But I wanted to talk to you first.”_

_“Me?” Christophe says, surprised. “Why?”_

_Cassandra sighs._

_“It’s… about what you told me a few months ago,” she says carefully. “About your… plans.”_

_Christophe’s first instinct is to look around, to make sure that nobody is eavesdropping. It’s dangerous to talk about these things, especially in a place like Garreg Mach. His second instinct is mostly just frowning. “Go on,” he says._

_“I… I wanted to know.” Cassandra forces herself to meet his eyes. “Are you sure you want to go through with it?”_

_Christophe’s frown deepens. They’ve had this conversation before. “Cass—“_

_“The Kingdom isn’t safe right now,” she blurts, words tumbling from her mouth. “Not with everything that’s just happened in Duscur. And I know this means a lot to you, but don’t you think—don’t you think it’s kind of insane, Christophe? If you’re just doing this because the Western Church_ told _you to—” Cassandra’s fist tightens in her cloak. “All I’m saying is, you still have the chance to change your mind. And I was thinking, since I’m all but exiled from the Kingdom—well, now’s the perfect time, isn’t it? You can run away, and I’ll help you appeal to Lady Rhea, and we can start over at Garreg Mach, and—”_

_“Cassie,” Christophe says gently, “I’m not changing my mind.”_

_Cassandra clamps her mouth shut, misery written clear beneath the anger that clouds her face. “Why?” she demands._

_“Because Fodlan is broken, Cassandra,” he says. “Because the Church isn’t what they seem. Haven’t you noticed it? The way they’re pulling the strings behind everything that happens—no, everything that’s_ ever _happened, in the entire history of this continent?” Christophe leans in, eyes wide. “Something isn’t_ right _, Cassie. But we’ll change that soon. Any day now, we’re going to make our move, and when we do—”_

_“Christophe,” Cassandra interrupts, very quietly. “I won’t ask you again. Is there nothing I can say to change your mind?”_

_Christophe pauses. Cassie looks so—sad. He hates it when Cassie looks sad._

_But there are bigger things than sorrow, he thinks. There are bigger things than him, and Cassandra, and Faerghus, and Fodlan._

_So he tells her that, and watches in resignation as her face grows even sadder._

_“Then…” she whispers, little more than an exhale into the space between them. “That’s it, then.”_

_It all happens very fast, after that. Cassandra straightens, pulling her hood down. The moment she does, strong hands emerge from the darkness behind him, wrenching his arms into place and locking his hands together behind his back._

_Shock and fear surge cold through his veins. Christophe struggles, but it’s no use—the more he fights, the tighter the grip on his wrists becomes._

_“Secured,” confirms his captor. “I’ll let you do the honors, Catherine.”_

_He stares dumbly at the woman in front of him, her face suddenly wiped blank, devoid of all emotion._

_“C-Cassie? What’s going on?”_

_Without a word, Cassandra undoes the clasp at the front of her cloak. Underneath, he catches a glimpse of the buckle at her neck, pale gleaming metal engraved with an all-too-familiar Crest._

_“Christophe Gaspard,” she says, “by the authority of the Knights of Seiros, you’re under arrest.”_

“—and _that’s_ how it happened,” Christophe finishes, sparks dancing around his feet as he takes a step towards Lonato. “I know you’ve been angry that she turned me in, Father, ever since you found out. But I’m not blameless. I never was. I don’t—I don’t remember what I did, it’s all a blur, but—don’t you think it must have been pretty bad?”

Lonato is still staring at Christophe, dumbfounded, as if he—well. As if he’s seen a _ghost._ Ashe can't blame him.

“Christophe,” he says weakly. “I don’t—”

“You know Cassie,” Christophe insists. “You’ve known her since we were _children._ You know that this never would have happened if we hadn’t both been acting on what we thought was right.”

Ashe is… still trying to process that. Ashe is still trying to process—

_All this time,_ he thinks, staring at Christophe’s back, the faint halo of light around him.

“She never wanted me to die,” Christophe adds, softer.

_All this time, Christophe knew._

Lonato’s lance clatters to the floor.

“Neither did I,” he says thickly, close to tears.

_How much did Christophe know?_

But they can’t afford to get into that now. In the silence, Ashe realizes that the muffled sound of clashing blades outside has steadily grown louder, closer to the door than ever. Lonato must come to this conclusion just moments after Ashe does, because he wastes no time shouldering his lance and helping Ashe to his feet, gripping both of his shoulders in heavy, gauntleted hands.

“Ashe,” he says. “I believe you. And I want to know everything about this—” —a gesture at Christophe— “—but now isn’t the time. And I can’t do anything for either of you if I die here.”

Ashe nods, suddenly dizzy from the effort of remaining upright. Lonato steadies him, a flicker of soft concern on his face before his pace grows frantic once more.

“Tell them you killed me,” he says. “Of course, you’ll need to avoid drawing any more suspicion from the church—”

Lonato pulls a letter out from a pocket beneath his armor. Then, he pulls a dagger out from his belt, slicing shallowly across the outside of his forearm. The blood drips onto the paper. “Get your Crest scholar down at the monastery to examine that,” he says. “Gaspard may not be a Crested house, but I’m sure he’s got enough blasted blood science to confirm that it’s mine.”

Lonato chews on the corner of his lip, trying to think of what else Ashe might need. “Goddess preserve me,” he mumbles, moments later, heading back to the altar where the bodies of his soldiers are propped up. “Ashe, come here.”

Ashe obeys more out of instinct than anything else. When Lonato cuts a deep slit into one of his dead men and starts painting Ashe with their blood, he almost screams.

“What are you _doing,”_ he half-shrieks as Lonato uses his clean hand to press the letter into Ashe’s medic bag.

Lonato leans back to inspect his handiwork. “I’ve rallied troops against the Church of Seiros,” he says wryly. “Don’t think that I don’t know exactly what kind of wrath I’ve brought upon myself. Whether I surrender or not, no place in Fodlan is safe for me. It’s the least I can do to try to make sure it doesn’t find its way to you.”

Lonato pauses, glancing at Christophe again. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I won’t just lay down and die here, Ashe. Promise me that you’ll live to explain it all another day.”

“I—” Ashe launches himself forward, wrapping his arms tight around the shell of Lonato's armor. Lonato hesitates only for a moment before he crushes Ashe to his chest in return. “I will. I promise,” Ashe says, a little watery.

“Good boy.” Lonato ruffles his hair before he looks over his head at his other son, who is rapidly starting to fade. The sparks around him dance before dissolving into errant light.

“And you, Christophe,” he says. “Keep your brother safe.”

Lonato releases Ashe. Then, he pulls on a mechanism behind the altar, revealing a hatch in the floor.

Ashe balks. “Has that always been—”

Lonato fucking _winks._

“There’s a lot about Gaspard that you still don’t know,” he says. “Next time, Ashe. Stay alive until then.”

Then the hatch closes, and the last of the light around Christophe fades, and Ashe slumps to the ground, feeling for all the world like every breath he’s ever taken has been drawn from his lungs all at once.

“Come on, sprout,” Christophe says softly. “There’s still a little more left to do.”

In the end, Ashe is relieved to find out, Catherine and Byleth have not killed each other. There are no more bodies to add to the piles of militiamen lining Magdred Way. The moment he emerges, the professor drops their sword, and Catherine—Cassandra Charon, full of Faerghus honor, despite her bluster about serving the church and the church alone—does the same.

“Lord Lonato of Gaspard is dead,” Ashe says. He’s acutely aware of the blood sprayed across his clothes, his face, his hands. “I—I killed him.” He can’t look at the professor. He can’t look at Catherine. He can’t look any of his classmates in the eye. “I took my father’s lance, and I—and I…”

“And the body?” Catherine prompts, a little softer than he would’ve expected.

This is easy enough. He doesn’t have to fake the way his voice shakes, the trembling in his hands. “I—I found this on the body,” he says, pulling out the letter stained with Lonato’s blood, not yet dry. “And then I… I left him there. I couldn’t—I didn’t want to—”

“You did what you had to, Ashe,” Byleth cuts in, gentle. They take the letter from his hands as he stares at the ground, his whole body shaking. Then, they pass it off to Catherine, who swears the moment she reads its contents and storms off to address what is probably a very concerning threat.

“Professor,” he says, once her footsteps have faded down the path. “I know it’s a bad time, but can I leave to check on the town? I… want to make sure my brother and sister are okay.”

Byleth blinks. “Of course,” they say. “Don’t worry about anything else that’s happened today. I’ll take care of things with the church.”

It feels like there’s something stuck in Ashe’s throat. “Thank you, professor.”

“Don’t mention it,” they reply.

Not five minutes into town, Ashe ducks into an alleyway and rounds on Christophe.

“How long have you known?”

Christophe blinks. “Wh—”

“I _said,”_ Ashe repeats, fuming, _“how long have you known?!”_

Christophe shakes his head, but he shrinks a little, and that’s how Ashe knows he’s hit his mark. “Everything that you told Lonato about Cass—Catherine,” he says. “All of that. How long did you know? How much did you remember?”

“I-I can explain—”

“Good, because I’m asking you to!”

Christophe slumps. “When Cassie came to the knights' hall that day,” he says. “I remembered it then. Everything that I told you and Father. But I don’t remember _what_ I did, Ashe, I swear. I just know that Cassie turned me in for it, and then something must have happened in between, and then I died.”

“And what about everything else?"

“What?”

_"I know you’ve been angry that she turned me in, ever since you found out,”_ Ashe recites, and Christophe’s face goes pale. “Everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been trying to do—Christophe, did you _know?_ You knew he was going to make a move against the Church and you didn’t _tell_ me?”

Christophe shrinks even further into himself.

“I had suspected,” he admits after a moment, very small. “After I died, Father started acting… strange. Not with you, never with you or the twins. But he changed. He started meeting with people from the Western Church more often. He thought that I was being framed by the Central Church, but—he never stopped to consider that they might have been framing me to cover up something I actually did.”

Ashe clenches both of his hands into fists, an entire month’s worth of exhaustion and confusion and fury boiling over at their peak.

“Christophe,” he shouts, “what did you _do?”_

“I don’t _remember!”_ Christophe yells back, static ringing in Ashe’s ears. “But this is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you. You work so hard and you worry so much and I knew, I knew that this was just going to make you—”

“I didn’t need you to protect me,” Ashe snarls. “I needed you to _trust_ me.”

Christophe looks stricken. “Ashe—“

“Forget it,” Ashe says, all of the fight drained out of him. He looks down at himself, still covered in blood. His hands haven't stopped shaking since they left the cathedral. “Forget about it. I… I’m going to go check on the kids.”

Christophe starts walking after him, but Ashe puts up a hand.

“Go catch up with the rest of the class, Christophe," he says.

“But—”

“No,” he repeats. “No. I just… I need some space right now, okay?”

With that, Ashe begins to walk away.

Christophe doesn’t follow.

On the eastern side of town, a thin, lazy column of smoke rises, stretching into the sky above.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, hi! still with me?
> 
> some notes:  
> \- update 2/6/21: hi! sorry about the hiatus! this fic isn't dead! 2020 hit hard and 2021 is somehow hitting even harder, but it'll be alive forever, i think.  
> \- my bright idea, presently, is to write most of the next chunk (7-8 chapters) before resuming posting. i will probably cave about 4 chapters in. please subscribe either way so that you know when this happens  
> \- you can retweet this fic [here](https://twitter.com/redamantian/status/1310418767546126336?s=20)!
> 
> next time: socks the cat. an assassination plot. a man named glenn fraldarius.
> 
> [@redamantian](https://twitter.com/redamantian) on twitter!


End file.
